Qualify well, make smart decisions, and relax.
Sounds easy enough for the Super Late Model drivers hoping to make the Country Pleasin’ Sausage Clash at the MAG, which begins tonight with qualifying and heat races that will lead up to a full-slate of feature races Saturday. The Clash is highlighted by a 100-lap Lucas Oil Super Late Model race, an opportunity to win a portion of largest purse of the year — $20,000 to the winner and more than $85,000 in total payouts — and a chance for the local guys to show they can hang with the full-time racers.
No pressure, right?
“When I first started (racing), I probably would put more pressure on myself,” said David Breazeale, a former State Series champ who didn’t make the Clash feature last season. “Now I try to treat it as a regular show. If you treat it any different, you put more pressure on yourself and it’s not as fun.”
Six drivers from Mississippi and West Alabama made the 24-car field last year, and Breazeale hopes to crack the field this year. He isn’t a stranger to making and competing well in big-money races — he finished in the top 10 at Volunteer Speedway in Bull’s Gap Tennessee in 2009 and owns a fourth-place finish at East Bay Raceway Park in Tampa, Florida. That experience, though, can be negated by worrying about things like money, which will draw more than 50 drivers from across the country.
“With the racing, it’s never about the money,” Breazeale said. “If it was, nobody would do it. You just try not to think about it because it already costs so much to do this. We just try to prepare to make the show and do the best we can.”
Breazeale, of Four Corners, said he hasn’t done anything different this week to prepare for the race. He hopes his business-as-usual approach rubs off his team, which is made up of many new faces who are learning how to set up a car and how to handle pit duties on the fly. Breazeale, after many successful years driving for Jerry Henderson and Randy Thompson, started his race team with a new Barry Wright race car.
“I just let them do their thing,” he said. “They watch the driver, and I try to keep a level head. They’re watching what I’m doing … if I get way too up, they tend to do that, and vice versa.
“It’s going good so far, though. We’ve had a couple of wins and seconds, ran third at Whynot and feel like we had a good car.”
Columbus’ Shay Knight has taken a similar approach to preparing for the Clash, though he has spent extra time with his setup. Like Breazeale and a host of others, he waited in a deep queue of drivers Thursday for practice laps at Magnolia Motor Speedway. Knight said his car has been fast in the first third of the season, but the inconsistent results have been a mixture of bad luck and “self-inflicted” mistakes.
“We qualified sixth in the Lucas Oil Comp Cams here a month ago and were running third in heat race and got in the wall,” Knight said. “I can’t make mistakes like that or miss a setup.”
Knight made the full-time switch to Super Late Models this season after racing NeSmith Crate. The last time he raced a full slate of Super Late Models was 2008, when he qualified in the top 10 but got taken out in the first lap of heat races, he said.
“The majority of these guys do this for a living — and one team is owned by (NASCAR driver) Clint Bowyer,” Knight said. “This is the biggest race of the year for us, and to make the field is a win for us,” Knight said. “We ran modifieds long enough with the same caliber of drivers, and we’ve been one of ‘those’ guys before.”
Last year’s Clash winner, Jonathan Davenport, will return this weekend with two-time Lucas Oil series champ Scott Bloomquist and three-time champ Jimmy Owens.
Mississippi Street Stock Series (MSSS), NeSmith Weekly Crate Late Models, 602 Late Model Stocks (tonight only), and Factory Stocks (Saturday night only) also will compete.
MAV TV will tape the race for broadcast at a later date
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