CALLAWAY, VA :: Mike Looney picked up his second consecutive victory in Saturday night’s Cavalier Equipment King of the Bullring at Franklin County Speedway. After taking the lead from Johnny Cash in the middle stages of the 100-lap race, Looney held back a challenge from Preston McGhee to score the win.
“We’re really blessed tonight,” Looney said. “I think it’s the Lord’s will. I knew that, if we shook that monkey off our back, we had a strong car. I’m just blessed to get to drive it. Billy Martin is a one man show. He keeps it at the house. He’s got it right now. Bolts are tight, she’s clicking and it’s going to be a fun season down here.”
Preston McGhee was content with his second place finish but felt he might’ve had something for Looney if the race was a little longer.
“I wish the race would’ve been 150 laps,” McGhee said. “I think I may have had something for him with this crate motor. It didn’t come on until lap 70. Those other boys burned their tires off. We just rode. That 30 car (Johnny Cash) has one heck of a motor. I couldn’t get by him. I could get to him but I couldn’t get by him. I’m happy for my first time here.”
Johnny Cash, who entered the race with the points lead, started on the front row and took the lead early from Kyle Dudley and held on until lap 63 when Looney roared past. Cash went on to finish third.
“We came here with a third place car tonight,” Cash stated. “It’s hard to come out here with used tires. Car was great, times were great but those two were some good guys out here. Looney and McGhee did a great job.”
Kyle Dudley started on the pole in the race but had problems throughout the race in a car the three-time and defending champion was not very happy with at the end of the night.
Doodle Lang scored the victory over Matt Slusher in a wild and crazy Mod-4 feature. In the final laps of the race, Lang and Slusher were the only two cars running in the event. With two laps to go, Slusher mounted a charge in turn three and ended up spinning Lang. That set up a green-white-checkered finish which saw Lang set sail on the restart and score the victory.
Slusher said the contact wasn’t intentional and he hoped that Lang wasn’t mad. Slusher’s apology was for nothing. Lang was mad and he made some strong statements in victory lane after the race.
“That’s not how I saw it, that’s how I expected it,” Lang said when asked about Slusher saying the contact wasn’t intentional. “No disrespect, Matt’s learning and I’ve been doing this stuff for 18 years. Everybody’s got to start somewhere but people want to keep tearing my car up, they’re going to start fixing stuff too because I’ve got a brand new one sitting at the house. They can walk away, I don’t care, and it doesn’t matter to me. We’ve been doing this stuff long enough. I come down here to race and have fun. You don’t use somebody else as a stopping point going in to the turn. He ran down there, drove in the corner and used me to stop. It’s okay. It happens but I’ll remember it later.”
When asked how he felt about scoring the victory, Lang said he didn’t feel it was a victory and he wasn’t done yet…
“I don’t really call this a victory,” Lang continued. “Yeah, I call it a win but then again I don’t. We only had four cars and two of them fell out. We’ll take it any way we can get it and I know everybody else would. This is just a play toy. These boys want to get serious; I’ve got a brand new one that’s never seen the track sitting in the shop so bring them on.”
Brittany Cockram was absent from the event as the team was unable to repair her motor and get her to the track on Saturday.
JC Morgan and Chris Amos staged a classic duel for the win in the Street ModZ division with the two drivers racing side-by-side for much of the duration of the event. The two drivers restarted side-by-side after a caution on the eighth lap of the race and ran side-by-side for the next eight laps with Amos on the inside and Morgan on the outside. Morgan took the lead from Amos on lap 14 but the two drivers continued running side-by-side for the next couple of laps before Morgan was finally able to clear him and drive away en route to victory.
“I’ll tell you what man, I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Morgan said. “Chris, his dad and Andrew help us out so much and nobody really knows how much everybody helps everybody in this class. I think everybody could learn a lot from this class. I hate that I got in to Chris coming out of two. I feel bad for it. I wish we could’ve raced that way until the end. It was fun either way.”
Patrick Janney scored his second consecutive victory in a wild U-CAR feature that was slowed by cautions several times in the event. Jason Warsing became the third different winner of the season in the Street Stock class over Danny Bush and Casey Cupp who dueled for the second position for much of the race. Buck Mitchell all but lapped the field in the Mini Cup race after Robert Gibson, who appeared to have the car to beat, dropped out of the race with problems. The Southern Ground Pounders saw Corey Agee score the overall victory and the victory in the Vintage Modified class while Sparky Staton scored the victory in the Vintage Sportsman class.
Racing returns to Franklin County Speedway on June 21st with the Pro All Stars Series (PASS) Super Late Model touring series and the inaugural running of the Bootlegger’s Brawl. More information on that race can be found at www.proallstarsseries.com.
For more information on Franklin County Speedway, visit the track website at www.fcspeedway.com, “like” Franklin County Speedway on Facebook or follow @FranklinCoSwy on Twitter.
