The Racing Is The Reason

January 13th, 2011

Dustin Morgan (93), Cody Brewer (96) and Cory Mallo (9) battle for position during the first night of the Chili Bowl in Tulsa, Okla. (Hein Brothers Photo)

TULSA, Okla. — Some people wonder why the Chili Bowl is held in such high regard by the racing fans that make the annual January pilgrimage to Tulsa, Okla., for five days of indoor midget racing at the Tulsa Expo Raceway.

The racing is always high quality on the fifth-mile dirt track, but Wednesday night’s preliminary event on River Spirit Casino Night included a finish that will be talked about for years.

After a fairly mundane undercard, the track came in perfectly for the feature and there were several grooves available for racers as they charged toward the end of the 25-lap feature. Two late yellow flags led to two late lead changes, including the final lap.

Cole Whitt kept pace with Gardner, who had passed Whitt two laps earlier, on the restart with two to go tried to slide past the 2008 Chili Bowl champion entering turn four on the final lap.

As Whitt moved up in front of Gardner, Crawford charged to the bottom of the track. Gardner saw a hole and made it three-wide as the trio raced for the checkered flag.

Gardner and Whitt made contact with Gardner’s Loyet Motorsports machine going airborne and flipping across the finish line, but behind Crawford, who took the checkered flag on the track. Whitt’s No. 71 skidded to a stop just feet short of the finish line.

The sold out crowd of approximately 15,000 roared its approval and cheered for many minutes after the mess was cleaned up. Celebrating its 25th anniversary event, the Chili Bowl is always sold out and its ticket holders generally renew, but it’s a pretty good bet those in attendance on this night would have re-upped for 2012 on the spot.

“People wonder why I come here every year,” said one racing reporter.

All that and still three nights of racing remain in the 25th Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals.

-Other notes from Wednesday night:

-Few in the stands would have known, but two of the top three finishers had mechanical problems. Winner Donnie Ray Crawford lost his brakes with 20 laps remaining and was pumping them repeatedly when he needed to use them.

Third-place finisher Thomas Meseraull had his engine go sour with only a handful of laps remaining. After the race he hadn’t had the opportunity to get back to the pits to assess the damage, but was concerned as his team has only one engine at its disposal.

- Fifty-five-year-old Jimmy Sills came out of retirement and returned to the Chili Bowl. Sills won the second C main and ran well in his B main, just missing transferring into the feature. Former Chili Bowl champion Jay Drake, who has raced sparingly in recent years, was also in the field Wednesday.

- Drivers were predicting some wild racing for Saturday afternoon. “You don’t want to be in the B on Saturday night,” Meseraull said. “The elbows will be up and everybody will be going for it. It’s the Chili Bowl, it doesn’t pay much, but we’re all here anyway.”

- Randy Hannagan was involved in four different yellow flags during Wednesday’s feature, receiving the single-fingered salute from Eric Sandage after Sandage ran out of room and flipped on the second lap.

- The loudest cheers of the night came for J.J. Yeley, who looked good in qualifying races, but had a tire go flat in the feature and ended up 23rd.