Garrett Smith finished third at Volunteer Speedway and avoided much of the carnage that took place in the latter half of the 50-lap feature honoring Scott Bloomquist, but he thought the race would have been much better if it were not for a number of incidents involving slower cars.
Much of the early portion of the 3rd Annual Scott Bloomquist Memorial Scorcher with the Southern All Star Dirt Racing Series was plagued with cautions for flat tires. The leaders only got to lap traffic once when they had around a 10-lap green flag run in the first 25 laps of the race. The second time the leaders had a decently long green flag run and got to lap traffic it ended in a big lap 35 wreck that eliminated third place running Carson Ferguson and involved other leaders including Dale McDowell, Forrest Trent, and Kaede Loudy.
Chris Madden, who led nearly the entire race, wounded his car when he got into the rear of a competitor he was attempting to pass. Madden told StockCarReport.com, “We had a dominant race car tonight, could kinda go anywhere I wanted to. Just had speed all over the race track. Just got to a lap car there. He’s a couple laps down and caused a couple cautions, and you get up under him and he just turns left, tears the flopper off of it. So the flopper’s under the tire and I get in a big push and Dale [McDowell] gets by me right then and then the next corner he KO’s the side of Dale. He tore the whole right side and the deck out of Dale’s car.”
The lap 35 incident began when Dale McDowell made contact with Alex Vance and Vance went hard up the track and collected Carson Ferguson, Forrest Trent, and Kaede Loudy. McDowell told StockCarReport about the wreck, “The two lap cars got together and when I went into the corner, he kind of come down to the middle. He didn’t know I was there I don’t think and I had already committed. I was going to use something up there a little bit ’cause I just had got the lead and they were kind of right in the path just because they was racing each other. So when I went in and started up, I think he was arcing down and when he was arcing down it hit by the right door.”
“I hate it,” McDowell added. “I don’t like to run over anybody. You try to race through that lap traffic. My apologies to him. I didn’t mean to go in there and run over nobody especially car guys that are out there racing. I don’t race that way. But when I got in there hard and moved up, he was there. Worked out where it didn’t take us out. Got the right door used up pretty good. Hope it didn’t tear those guys stuff up too much.”
Vance shared his perspective, “From what I feel like I was running my line. I just got run over by the 17. I didn’t see what happened. All I know is I was out in clean air, running my line, and I just got punted. Got hit, went up into the wall. Forrest didn’t have nowhere to go or Kaede and now we got a wrecked race car.”
That lap 35 wreck was just the beginning of the mayhem as there would be multiple cautions afterwards. Will Hicks was involved in a wreck with Billy Franklin and then Forrest Trent and Benji Hicks were also involved in an incident together.
Given the carnage, Smith shared that he thinks race officials should look at possibly implementing a minimum race pace rule to try and limit the destruction.
“I’m not trying to complain, but if you’re that off the pace, you can’t—. It’s hard to race with guys like that on a big, high-banked, fast race track. Kind of dirty, don’t know where they’re going. And they took out some of the front running cars. I hate that.”
When asked if the officials should’ve stepped in, Smith answered, “That’s something you got to talk about later. I don’t think that’s something you can do mid-race, but I think it’s something to look at, for sure.”
“There was two really good race cars right up front,” he continued. “I feel bad for them. They worked all night just to be up front, have a good car, and just a lap car in the way or something.”
0 Comments