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Kevin Kovac
CONCORD, N.C. (May 21) - Josh Richards isn't a teenager anymore.
He also isn't performing like the 20-year-old his birth certificate reveals him to be.
Yes, the sensational young driver known as 'Kid Rocket' is truly coming of age this season on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series. The spectacular weekend he just enjoyed - a victory on Friday night (May 16) at Attica (Ohio) Raceway Park and second-place finish on Sunday night (May 18) at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway - point to a racer who is taking the next step and becoming a serious national championship contender.
Even Richards understood that his near-sweep of the tour's Midwestern doubleheader meant something in the big picture. After all, Richards has admittedly excelled on big, fast tracks and struggled on small, tight ovals - and both Attica and Lincoln fit the description of bullrings that have been his Achilles Heal.
"This is what it takes to win a championship," said Richards. "We've always been fast at certain tracks and struggled at others, but I feel like we're turning the corner. The little tracks normally aren't my deal - especially ones like (Lincoln) where it's not a momentum type of deal - so finishing second definitely gives me some confidence.
"Hopefully we can carry this all year and keep getting solid finishes everywhere we go. If you can adapt to most places, you can be in the hunt for a championship."
Richards is significantly ahead of the pace he set en route to a distant sixth-place finish in the 2007 points standings. Through 11 events last season he sat fifth in the standings (52 points behind) with one win, three top-fives, six top-10s, two heat wins and $25,290 in earnings; this year after 11 races he's fourth in the standings (-10 behind leader Steve Francis) with two wins, six top-fives, eight top-10s, eight heat wins and $47,510 in earnings.
ALL IS WELL: Chub Frank has his groove back.
The weekend trip to the Midwest was a great tonic for the veteran from Bear Lake, Pa., who climbed back behind the wheel of his favorite car and promptly returned to Victory Lane.
Frank, 46, competed at both Attica and Lincoln with the car he calls 'Old Faithful' - the Rocket machine he's run in a majority of his appearances since debuting it in September 2006 - for the first time since he flipped it last month at The Dirt Track @ Lowe's Motor Speedway. The result was a second-place finish at Attica (after he led the first 43 laps of the 50-lap A-Main) and a win in Sunday night's 'Land of Lincoln 40' at Lincoln.
When informed that his first WoO LMS triumph of 2008 came exactly one year to the day that he had won his first tour race of '07, Frank produced one of his sly smiles.
"Good," he said of the date symmetry. "I hope it works out the same way."
Indeed, after scoring his initial WoO LMS victory of 2007 on May 18 at I-96 Speedway in Lake Odessa, Mich., Frank went on to win the tour's next race at Delaware International Speedway - which happens to be the next stop on the 2008 schedule, on Thurs., May 29. He also ended up as the tour's winningest driver last season, with six triumphs.
Frank's victory was the 14th of his career on the WoO LMS, moving him out of a tie with Billy Moyer to seize sole possession of fourth on the tour's 'modern-era' (2004-present) win list. He's now just one win behind Rick Eckert and Steve Francis and two behind Scott Bloomquist.
HE EARNED IT: Darrell Lanigan might have cemented his status as a WoO LMS title threat with an impressive rally on Sunday night at Lincoln.
After being involved in a heat-race tangle that forced him to pit for quick repairs to his Rocket No. 29, Lanigan was a man on a mission when he tagged the rear of the field. He shrugged off a bent spindle and roared through the pack, grabbing the fourth and final transfer spot with a last-lap pass of Rookie of the Year contender Vic Coffey.
Lanigan, who turns 38 on June 3, went on to record a fourth-place finish from the 14th starting spot in Lincoln's A-Main. It was his third straight top-five finish and left him tied for second in the points standings with Frank, just six points behind Francis.
"We're happy to get out of here with a top-five after the way the night started," said Lanigan, who has three top-five and nine top-10 finishes in 11 WoO LMS events so far this season. "We ended up having a good points night."
What a difference a year makes for Lanigan. After 11 WoO LMS races in 2007 he was already effectively out of the championship hunt, sitting ninth in the standings (142 points out of the lead) without a single top-five finish and just five top-10s.
BUZZ IN TOWN: When Shannon Babb did a live pre-race interview with a local radio station Sunday at Lincoln Speedway, he was asked about his 2008 season on the WoO LMS - and all the commotion going on in his nearby hometown of Moweaqua, Ill. (estimated pop. 1,852).
See, Moweaqua is one of several central Illinois locations where the movie The Informer is being filmed, creating plenty of talk among the locals. The movie stars well-known actor Matt Damon, who plays Mark Whitacre, a former employee of Archer Daniels Midland Co. who agreed to act as an inside informant for the FBI to help build a case against ADM for conspiring to fix the price of the corn-based product lysine. Whitacre lived in Moweaqua during his time at ADM and his former home there is being used for filming.
Of course, Babb hasn't seen too much of the big action in his town. That's because he hasn't been home much for the past month; he's either been in North Carolina working hard with crewmen Tommy Grecco and Jay Hunt to gear up NASCAR Sprint Cup star Clint Bowyer's dirt Late Model team for a WoO LMS championship run or on the road racing.
Lincoln's WoO LMS show provided Babb an opportunity to sleep in his own bed and race in front of family and friends. He was frustrated, however, by his subpar performance on Sunday night, finishing a quiet 11th in his Rayburn car.
MIA: Steve Francis went racing on Sunday night at Lincoln without his car owner Dale Beitler, who rarely misses an event in which his team competes.
Beitler attended Friday night's show at Attica, but he returned home to Maryland to take care of business commitments. He was happy to learn that Francis finished a strong third at Lincoln, snapping a string of three consecutive WoO LMS starts without a top-five.
RETOOLING: Tim McCreadie joined the fields at both Attica and Lincoln as he continues working to bring his portion of the Sweeteners Plus dirt Late Model team back to its 2006 WoO LMS championship level.
McCreadie's effort currently consists of just one Rocket car and mechanic Al Stevens. He does have four engines at his disposal as he rebuilds his operation with Sweeteners Plus team owner Carl Myers, who has given the O.K. for McCreadie to go dirt Late Model racing as much as he'd like with the New York star's NASCAR Nationwide Series action as a Richard Childress Racing development driver currently in limbo.
Finishes of ninth (Attica) and eighth (Lincoln) provided a solid but not spectacular WoO LMS weekend for McCreadie, who did win his first dirt Late Model feature in over a year on Saturday night when he invaded La Salle (Ill.) Speedway for a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event.
McCreadie plans to enter upcoming WoO LMS events at Delaware International Speedway (May 29) and Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway (May 31) and is a good bet to compete in the seven-race WoO LMS 'Great Northern Tour' that visits Pennsylvania, Canada and New York from June 17-28. The swing includes a June 24 date at Canandaigua (N.Y.) Speedway, a track that McCreadie called home during his DIRTcar big-block Modified days and is located just a half-hour from the Sweeteners Plus racing shop in Avon, N.Y.
LONG LAP: Rookie of the Year contender Vic Coffey could only laugh when he heard his official lap time during qualifying on Friday night at Attica - a rip-roarin' 1 minute, 50.855 seconds around the one-third-mile oval.
Why did the Leicester, N.Y., driver have to sit on that unusually lengthy time? After his Sweeteners Plus No. 32c suddenly shut off during his first time-trial lap and he rolled to a stop before the start/finish line, he got the machine to refire and smartly drove backwards around the track and then turned around so he could get his momentum up for one fast lap. Alas, he drove over the cushion in turns one and two on his second lap, forcing him to be satisfied with his long initial circuit.
Coffey rallied nicely in his heat, coming from the rear to earn a transfer position. He went on to finish 14th in the A-Main and placed 15th on Sunday night at Lincoln.
The DIRTcar big-block Modified veteran noted during the weekend that while his initial plan for WoO LMS action this year was to run the minimum of 30 races that will be used to determine the tour's Rookie of the Year, he is contemplating running more events.
OLD-TIME TRAVELER: Danny Johnson - another DIRTcar big-block Modified star chasing the 2008 WoO LMS Rookie of the Year award - towed to Attica and Lincoln in a manner that turned the clock back 20 years or more.
The 48-year-old from Phelps, N.Y., pulled into the pit area with his JIR Motorsports No. 27J on an open trailer. He used a motorhome owned by JIR's Jeff Isabell as his tow vehicle, while the cars of Johnson's JIR Motorsports teammates Joe Isabell and Sean Beardsley were transported to the tracks in the operation's big yellow hauler.
Johnson brought along his girlfriend Tracy, three of their children and two dogs on the trip. He ran well at Attica where he qualified through a heat for the first time in WoO LMS competition, but he was a DNQ at Lincoln.
NEXT UP: The WoO LMS will have the Memorial Day holiday weekend off and then return to action with an East Coast doubleheader on Thurs., May 29, at Delaware International Speedway in Delmar, Del., and Sat., May 31, at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway.
INFO: For more information on the WoO LMS, visit www.worldofoutlaws.com.
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