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| Courtesy Thomas Vick, Evergreen Speedway (click to enlarge)
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| Jill and Naima Lang celebrate his track championship and her bomber feature race victories during Championship Night on Sept. 27 at Evergreen Speedway in Monroe, Wash. |
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Evergreen Speedway 2008 season review
Posted
at
4:10 pm
by Scott Whitmore
It’s been a few days since the season ended at Evergreen Speedway. I’ve had some time to reflect on 2008, and thought I would share some of my thoughts with you.
First off, congratulations to the track champions: Naima Lang (Super Stocks), John Carlson (Super Figure Eight), Lane Sundholm (Bombers), Mark Weedin (Mini-Stock) and Mike Middleton (Stinger Eight).
Not to blow my own horn, but I picked Lang, Carlson and Weedin to win their track championships. In the bomber division, I went first with Darrel Lutovsky, then changed my pick to Jill Lang midway through the season. I didn’t pick a champion for the Stinger Eight division … just didn’t know enough about them — then.
Naima Lang had a breakout year, recording his first Super Stock win and then adding seven more victories en route to the NASCAR state and track championships. Defending champion John Zaretzke gave him a run though, making you wonder what might have happened if his season caught fire one race earlier than it did.
The Super Figure Eight division was dominated by Carlson, who won seven times including sweeping the coveted 60 Minutes of FEAR and Figure Eight Nationals. Before Saturday's finale "The Cowboy" mentioned to me that he considered himself NASCAR's Figure-Eight champion. After all, he said, the figure-eight racers all joined NASCAR this season ... how many other NASCAR home tracks have figure-eight racers under the rainbow-sherbert banner?
The Bombers provided some of the most exciting and edge-of-the-seat racing this season, with Sundholm and Jim Foti battling for the championship right up to the finale. I said time and again that the Bombers went three-wide as soon as the green flag dropped, making their races must-see events. You just never knew what would happen.
Weedin won six times this season, but didn’t lock up the championship until his friend and defending champion Chuck Richard had transmission trouble in the heat race during the final night. Weedin helped Richard replace the transmission between the heat and feature races, too.A talented field
Weedin pointed out to me in an email on Monday that in Saturday’s season finale the top four places in the Mini-Stock feature race went to division champions: Steve Green (1996) won the race, followed by Nat Barber (2004), Weedin (2006, 2008) and Richard (2007).
To me that is another indication of the depth of talented drivers who race at Evergreen. And there were plenty of new faces this season, as well as drivers coming back to race or established drivers who moved up to other divisions.
James Mugge and Steve Ptacek moved up from Bombers to race in the Super Stocks this year, with Mugge winning rookie of the year honors. Both ran strong all season long and are good bets to win races in 2009.
Former Mini-Stock champion (2001, ’02, ’03) Scott LaCross also joined the Super Stock division this season, as did former ARCA truck racer Daniel Moore. Both LaCross and Moore showed steady improvement throughout the season, as well as determination and great attitudes.
Jon Roberts returned from an extended absence to race in the Mini-Stock division and 2006 champion Duane Schosbeck made a handful of starts in the Bomber division.
Also making several Bomber races was 17-year-old Shelby Minor-Ball. Minor-Ball joined arguably the toughest division at Evergreen, but showed improvement in every race. Here's hoping she picks up where she left off next season.
Seth Funden won the final Stinger Eight race of the season, nudging Ben Chandler aside coming out of the left-hander and then winning a drag race to the checkered flag. Although I wanted to do more with the figure-eight divisions this year, I'm not sure I did as much as I could. Something to work on for next year, I suppose. Still, those are some crazy, crazy drivers, who clearly enjoy that style of racing.
Actually, there are a lot of drivers in all divisions that I haven’t named who we should watch for in 2009; which makes the prospects for another strong season that much brighter.Favorite moment from 2008
My plan was to sit back, take some time, maybe review my old articles in an attempt to come up with a favorite moment from the 2008 season. Turns out I didn’t need to put that much effort into it, as it popped right into my head.
Without a doubt my favorite moment from 2008 was the side-by-side racing of Naima Lang and Jason Fraser on the five-eighths mile oval on June 28 during the Mid-Season Championship. Here’s what I wrote then:
Jason Fraser won an epic battle with points leader Naima Lang en route to victory in the 75-lap Super Stock feature race, the first time this season the late models competed on Evergreen Speedway’s five-eighths mile oval.
With Lang outside of him on the front row on a lap-57 restart, Fraser missed a shift and Lang took the lead heading into turn 1.
A lap and a half later Fraser pulled even with Lang, and the two raced side-by-side — Fraser on the inside, Lang on the outside — for the next seven laps.
“He’d pinch me off and I’d push him up the track,” Fraser said about Lang from victory stage. “We bumped and we slid into each other … I just have so much respect for him.”
“Our cars are set up absolutely identical,” said Fraser, who shares crew chief Jesse Jensen with Lang. “We knew how good our car was on the outside so we were a little worried he could be good out there.”
The marathon battle finally ended when the two front-runners came up on lapped traffic, and Lang had to break off to go around a slower car.
“That’s the hardest race I’ve ever raced on the five-eighths by far,” said Lang from victory stage while holding his second-place trophy.
The fact that it was over in about three minutes — figure roughly 25 seconds per lap — is beside the point. For me, those three minutes were timeless. I clearly remember thinking each time they went by the start-finish line, “They can’t keep going like this … they can't keep going like this ... they can’t keep going like this … can they keep going like this?”Promises, promises
At the beginning of the season assistant promoter and track manager Terry Buell said the speedway was going to “throw races at the fans left and right.”
I’d say they delivered on that promise, and then some.
Features were shortened and heat races scheduled at the beginning of the evening’s program, meaning fans usually saw each driver race twice.
Double-file restarts were another new change for 2008. Although this change had a rocky start — many drivers were against it and getting cars lined up correctly proved maddeningly hard at times — things got smoother as the season went on. And even when it was frustrating this change produced great, fan-pleasing racing.Outlook for 2009
Keeping both double-file restarts and the heat races where they are should definitely be part of the speedway’s plan for next year.
I don’t have any hard data to prove it, but I’d say the average car count for most divisions was the same or slightly higher than 2007. The same is true for attendance.
Although those two data points may not seem striking by themselves, they are encouraging signs when you consider the slowing economy and competition for leisure money. Several local short-tracks around the nation failed this year, and some in our region had as few as six cars starting in their feature divisions.
New speedway promoters Lex and Danni Johnson took over right before the season started — an incredibly tough task. I would compare it to jumping into the pilot’s seat on an airplane rolling down the runway for takeoff. They had to get the plane in the air, keep it there while learning to fly, and then land it safely.
They worked hard, and I sincerely feel the Johnsons did the best job they possibly could this season. More importantly, they learned a bunch that will make next year even better.
With a talented group of drivers, veterans and rookies, Saturday nights at Evergreen Speedway should continue to be — as I said five months ago about the season opener — “fun, fast and loud.”Thanks
In closing I’d like to offer my thanks to a few folks.
Terry Buell, Kelly Hale, Thomas Vick and everyone at the speedway for making my job so much easier — and a whole lot of fun.
To the drivers and crew, their families and the fans. The generosity so many of you showed me this season often left me speechless. I should have talked to and written about more of you, I know. Next year …
Herald sports editor Kevin Brown for letting me do this in the first place. For the thousandth time, I can’t believe I got paid to watch racing. Herald new media guru Elaine Helm suggested the live blog and taught me how to post YouTube videos and widgets, and how to bold and italicize text. Also, former Herald columnist John Sleeper for his sage advice and timely encouragement.
Finally, my thanks to any of you who emailed or stopped me at the speedway to say you’d read this blog or a story on The Herald's auto racing page. Whether you agreed with me, thought I was nuts or whatever else, it was great to know someone was on the other side of the ether-sphere. That made it all worthwhile.
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