FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
September 19, 2012
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Chub Frank Earns Sorely-Needed Top-Five Finish To Close World of Outlaws Late Model Series Doubleheader In Midwest 

BEAR LAKE, PA – Sept. 19, 2012 – Chub Frank badly needed a positive turn to his racing fortunes – and last Saturday night, he got a welcomed shot in the arm.
 
Stemming a building tide of frustrating misfortune, Frank collected a very impressive fifth-place finish in the 55-lap Pepsi Nationals at Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Mo. He charged forward from the 20th starting spot in the A-Main to register his ninth top-five run of the national tour’s 2012 season but first since a fifth-place outing on July 10 at South Dakota’s Black Hills Speedway.
 
The 50-year-old Bear Lake, Pa., veteran’s performance at I-55 came after he lost a shot at a top-five the previous night at Belle-Clair Speedway in Belleville, Ill., due to a mid-race restart scramble and he had to switch to a backup car during Saturday’s program.
 
Frank failed to transfer in his Pepsi Nationals heat race on Saturday evening and found a reason for his ineffectiveness: a broke axle tube on his Corry Rubber/Lake Shore Paving/Hino Toyota Rocket No. 1*. The mechanical trouble prompted him to pull out his second machine, and he then marched to a second-place finish in a B-Main and made a steady advance through the A-Main pack, finally cracking the top five in the final laps.
 
“We needed a top five bad so we’re happy to get out (of I-55) with a fifth,” said Frank. “The way things have been going, I figured we’d break something again. But I just got to the point where I didn’t care and said, ‘I’m just gonna run it till there’s nothing left.’
 
“I gave it everything we had. I hit the wall pretty hard a few times – knocked the (rear) deck over, messed the spoiler up. But we got to the finish.
 
“I think with another lap I could’ve gotten Darrell (Lanigan) for fourth because he was wounded after climbing up on top of the wall (while attempting to grab the lead from Dennis Erb Jr. on lap 50) and my tires were coming on. That restart with a couple to go (there was a green-white-checkered finish after a lap-54 caution flag) wasn’t enough for me – I needed about three or four laps for the tires to come in.”
 
In Friday’s first-ever WoO LMS event at the one-fifth-mile Belle-Clair bullring, Frank thought he was on his way to top-five finish after hustling from the 18th starting spot to eighth by lap 25. But a caution flag that circuit produced a ragged restart that cost him dearly. He found himself spun around on the inside of turns four, forcing him to restart at the rear of the field and relegating him to an ultimate finish of 15th.
 
“That’s what happens when they jack and jerk around up front (on a restart),” said Frank, who ended the St. Louis-area doubleheader still fifth in the WoO LMS points standings but pulled within 30 points of fourth-place Tim McCreadie. “The guys in the middle in the pack get all screwed up and pay the price.
 
“They gotta come up with something better for restarting races at places like (Belle-Clair where you don’t have any way maneuverability to go through the infield because there’s an inside wall. You’re stuck in that kind of situation – you get spun, and you end up going to the tail.”
 
Frank’s weekend in the Midwest was a satisfying rebound from his disappointing visit to Ohio’s Eldora Speedway on Sept. 7-8 for the prestigious World 100. He wasn’t even able to make a lap in his heat race, getting swept up in an opening-circuit scramble that turned him around in the second corner and got him clipped by a passing car.
 
Frank had timed 25th-fastest of 123 World 100 entries, just missing the 24-car heat-race invert. Instead of starting from the pole in a heat he started fifth – and that ended up putting him right in the middle of a tangle. He loaded up after the incident and spent the remainder of the evening watching the racing from a suite rented by one of his sponsors.
 
Frank’s next start comes this weekend (Sept. 21-22) in the WoO LMS’s Keyser Manufacturing ‘Down & Dirty 100’ presented by NAPA Auto Parts at Berlin Raceway in Marne, Mich. The $20,000-to-win event will be run at a famed asphalt track that has been covered with dirt for one historic weekend of action.
 
For more information on Chub Frank, visit his Web site at www.chubfrank.com.
 
Chub Frank Racing receives support from many valued sponsors, including Corry Rubber, Lake Shore Paving, Hino Toyota, Sorbera Family Chiropractic, Horton Equipment, All-Star Performance, Slavic Corporation, GW Performance, Integra Shocks, Hoosier Tire and Roush-Yates Racing Engines.