Posted by Langley Austin on March 21, 2008, 11:07 am
Board Administrator

Story By: Langley Austin email: langley@race22.com Plenty of Action On & Off the Track in the Last Week Wytheville, VA ~ It's been a crazy week of action in the world of Late Model Stock Car racing on and off the track that begun last Sunday with Southern National Raceway Park and Caraway Speedway putting racing action on the track and a couple of Media Day Open House test sessions at Concord Motorsport Park and Hickory Motor Speedway. Despite the racing action at Southern National and Caraway, the RACE22.com crew headed off to check out the UARA-STARS Series cars testing during the Concord Open House. All the while, Matt McCall was laying the wood to the drivers in twin races at Southern National and Jason York decided to shatter the Caraway Speedway track record and take his York Racing team to victory lane. York's win was recorded in the history books while McCall had to wait until Wednesday to find out that his wins had been stripped after his Ford Crate engine was deemed illegal due to internal coatings on headers. McCall, who was going to make a run at the Southern National Raceway Park Late Model Stock Car title was unavailable for comment at time of press, but now two races behind in the points he'll have a hard time if he returns to action next weekend, March 29th. Corey Strickland and Ryan Rhodes inherited the wins after McCall's disqualification. Back to the Concord Motorsport Park on Sunday there was seventeen Late Model Stock Cars in attendance, most of which were UARA-STARS Series regulars and a couple were the tracks regulars. 2007 UARA-STARS Champion, Ross Furr had the car that he ran Bristol with last season out to practice for the Concord season opener, a race he may or may not attempt to run on Saturday, March 22nd. 2007 Concord track champion, Chuck Crump was out turning some impressive laps and he has stated that he may attempt to compete in the UARA-STARS season opener next weekend at Concord while continuing to chase the back to back championship at Concord in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series Late Model Stock Cars. Several of the UARA-STARS regular were out including Darrell Wallace, Jr. and his new teammate, Nick Losito both of which will run out of the Grumpy's Performance stables. Jake "the Snake" Crum, who won his first UARA-STARS event last season was one of the fastest cars in attendance turning some impressive laps and running all over top of the competition. Plenty of other cars were out and we'll have more in the coming days on just who will compete in the season opening race and maybe we'll even have a few surprises that we can't let out just yet. Moving on to Motor Mile Speedway on Tuesday for Media Day and Tommy Lemons Jr. put on a show for the media, just not the kind of show he would have liked anyone to see especially him. Lemons destroyed his brand new Marlowe Racing Chassis when his right front Hub broke sending first his tire into the wall and then his new racer. A source at the track as an onlooker, who is a veteran Late Model crew chief told me that "he had never seen a car bent up that bad". Lemons was however unhurt, but I'm betting he was a little sore on Wednesday morning after getting his bell rung. The rest of the week has been kinda quiet other than the disqualification of Matt McCall's two wins at Southern National were announced yesterday evening. I'm sure with the season openers of Greenville Pickens and Concord Motorsport Park this weekend for the Late Model Stocks and the PASS South Super Late Models opening the season at Hickory Motor Speedway on Saturday night. Each week we'll bring you a wrap-up of all the Late Model Stock Car goings on and this weekend we're planning to head down to Concord Motorsport Park for their NASCAR Weekly Series season opener as we test out our new video equipment which should be arriving UPS here in the next few minutes so until then we'll be busy racing