Dale McDowell might have a World 100 to his name in the record books, but he is not satisfied with it and wants to win one “outright.”
McDowell won the 2005 World 100, but it came after Shannon Babb was disqualified at the scales for being 10 pounds too light. That win is one of his most memorable although he still sees it as Babb’s win. He told StockCarReport.com, “We won the ’05 World 100, but I won it ’cause Shannon Babb was light. He won it. He passed me. I led a lot of it. He passed me and he actually won it, but he was light at the scales and so we got that.”
Given his win came at the expense of Babb’s disqualification, McDowell is determined to win it outright after a couple heartbreaking losses including one to Billy Moyer, “One of them was one of the years I passed Billy for the lead and I moved up on the race track and he passed me back on the bottom just like I passed him. That was one that got away from me. You have several that go through through all those years. You’ll lose a bunch and they string pretty hard, but that was probably one of the-.”
“I always wanted to get a World just outright, not inherit it,” McDowell declared. “So I’m running out of years, we’ll see. Last year we run second. The year before I think we ran second as well. We’ve been right there.”
McDowell went on to acknowledge just how hard it is to get into the race let alone win the World 100 based on the format that Eldora Speedway uses as well as the sheer level of competition.
“Getting in it, these inversions and stuff like that, the way they do it, it makes it a hell of a show for the race fans, but it makes it tough on the racers. And all the guys are so close on times. These heat races are going to be elbows up, for sure.”
“The World 100 is just the granddaddy of them all,” he continued. “They started this so many years ago. I think this is the 56th. Everybody’s here. Sold out capacity. Everybody that’s anybody that is here racing with minus a couple that had family deals to go to and things, but everybody’s here. So you have to get in there, mix it up with them and see how things pan out for you.”
As for his strategy, McDowell relayed, “Obviously, get in the show first. Figure out how we can do that because it could go through-. If you can’t get through a heat, we’re in a provisional spot if two in front of us get in. If that doesn’t work, we got to go through a B-Main. So it’s just going to be a big step-by-step procedure to get in.”
“Once you get in, you know, I think we can kind of do what we’ve been normally doing as far as our setup wise or something and just watch the racetrack conditions and see how hard you got to go and when to go hard and all that stuff,” he concluded. “It’s a challenge. It’s a challenge here. That’s what makes it so fun. That’s what make it a sellout crowd and all these people involved.”
“We’ll just go at it and see. If it’s our night, it’s our night. If not, we’ll watch and come back and try it again.”
Hot laps for the World 100 begin at 6:30 PM with heat race action expected to start at 7:30 PM. The top three from each of the six heat races will advance to the world 100. Each heat race is 15 laps long.
Those finishing in positions 4-11 in the heat races will move to a B-Feature. There will be two B-Features with the top four finishers from those races advancing to the World 100.
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