Caraway: Stancill Out-Duels Thomson / Anderson Hospitalized
By Matthew Dillner
Racers want to win races, not the just races within the races. That may sound like something Baseball Legend Yogi Berra would say, but in the world of Legends racing, that bizarre statement actually makes sense. If John Stancill, a Semi-Pro division driver, would have finished second behind Pro Division driver Brandon Thomson, he still would have won his division. But you aren’t going to tell a racecar driver to just ride and settle for second. The competitive nature in both Stacill and Thomson showed at Caraway Speedway on Friday night as the two cars checked out from the rest of the field and dueled to the finish.
“Brandon Thomson was behind me and was on my tail for the entire race,” said Stancill. “This track, if you make one error it won’t be good. I drove real good and he drove real good so we ended up one-two.”
Thomson’s #54 was glued to the bumper of Stancil’s #20 all the way around the half-mile oval. One slip up was all it took for Thomson to take the lead.
“Sometimes I would slip up coming out of the corner and he wouldn’t,” said Stancill. “So he just beat me by getting right under me so I gave him room. I just had to keep my cool and not get worried or twitchy or anything. There were a few laps to go when he passed me so I was going to try to make my move again.
“I followed him a lot and could get a run down the straight-away but not enough to get underneath him,” said Thomson. “My car was a little tight in the center which made it a little loose off. I finally got a good run on him coming out of turn four and pulled down underneath him. He gave me the inside and a lot of room.”
Stancill's heads-up move enabled him to win at Caraway and take a victory lap. (LN Photo)
Thomson may have gotten by Stancill, but a bad decision opened the door for Stancill to re-take the lead and pull away for his second win of the season at Caraway.
“We caught a lapped car and that got a little twisted but I came out on top of that too,” said Stancill about the pivotal moment of the race. “The lapped car probably expected us to go to the outside of him. Brandon wanted to go under him and he just got stuck behind and I went on the outside of both of them.”
Stancill's #20 and Thomson's #54 ran together in practice as well as in the feature. (LN Photo)
“When I got by I run up on a lapped car coming out of four,” explained Thomson, “I should have went on the outside because lapped cars usually go on the inside. He came down and I was kind of underneath him and I got real crossed up. John went around us on the outside.
“I was pretty mad inside the car,” added Thomson. “I knew it really killed my momentum and John stayed in it and could drive farther away until we made it to turn one-and-two where we could be at the same speed again. I was pretty mad inside the car but had to stay cool as much as I could because if you are too mad you will overdrive the car. He kept his cool and stayed a good bit in front of us.”
Although he still would have been rewarded with the Semi-Pro victory even if he finished second overall, Stancill did gain an extra boost in his chase for the Legends National Championship.
“I didn’t necessarily have to win that race to win Semi-Pro, but I just did,” said Stancill after the win. “In INEX points if I win the overall I get a few extra points. I’m not going to back down anyway. That’s just not me.”
Thomson crossed the line in second but was still rewarded with the Pro Division win. Although he didn’t enjoy seeing the win slip away, he was happy with his decision to come run at Caraway. The 17-year old driver had positive things to say about the experience and the Semi-Pro that beat him.
“I’m still happy that I came up here to run,” said Thomson. “I love running at this place. I won here the last time I came so I wanted to come and keep that wining streak alive coming here once a year. There are a lot more challenging cars then there have been here. John Stancill is one of them. He may be a Semi-Pro but he’s just as good as any of us Pros.”
Division Winners
Semi Pro: John Stancill (1st overall)
Pro: Brandon Thomson
Masters: Wayne Austin
WILD HEAT RACE CRASH SENDS ANDERSON TO THE HOSPITAL
Jordan Anderson, who is running for the National Championship in the Pro Division and is second in Pro Division points at Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s Summer Shootout Series, took a vicious lick in the wall at Caraway during a heat race. The impact destroyed Anderson’s #19 and sent him to the hospital.
LegendsNation.com spoke to Anderson on Monday and the young driver admitted that while he was still sore, he was felling much better and was looking forward to coming back to Lowe’s for round six of the Shootout Tuesday night.
“I fell a little bit better right now,” said Anderson from his home in South Carolina. “When I hit the wall they said it knocked me out. They said I was out for three to four minutes. I didn’t think it was that long but that is what the track officials said. Obviously I needed to go to the hospital and get checked out. I got all the x-rays that needed to be done and got a cat-scan and my head checked out good. They said I had some bruising on my lower spine and a concussion. I bruised my knee up pretty bad. I was really lucky to come out of that one clean. I had so many people and drivers at the track praying for me and that made it nice. We are going to go to the doctor today and make sure it’s ok to go up to Charlotte and race.
Anderson's #19 sat in the pit area at Caraway as he was in the hospital getting checked out. (LN Photo)
Jordan hit the wall hard, but remembered exactly how the accident transpired.
“I started in the back of my heat race and I was trying to make it up through the field. There were three drivers in front of me and they got sideways. I closed on them pretty quick. An oil line or something came off of Kyle Beattie’s car and he spun out at the bottom of the track. I was going to go high to miss it and didn’t know there was oil down at the time because it was like little smoke-bomb and it went away. It wasn’t like a big poof of smoke. When I hit it, I went straight up the track and got on the brakes to slow it down and that didn’t work. I got back in the throttle to spin it around and that didn’t work and by the time I tried both those things, the wall had come up and I hit it a ton. That’s probably the hardest hit I have ever had.”
Some involved in the incident were not happy with how the wreck happened.
The wall marks from Anderson's vicious hit into the turn-three wall at Caraway. (LN Photo)
“We ran down the back straight-away and Paddy (Rodenbeck) and Brandon (Thomson) had been roughing each other up going for the lead,” said a disgusted Kyle Beattie. “I was just hanging out in third because I knew all I had to do was finish third to make the re-draw. They just got done knocking each other around a bit and I got right up on Paddy’s bumper. Paddy just tried to get down behind him and hit the brakes a little excessive. He locked the front tires up and I had nowhere to go. I don’t know why he stopped so fast. I was still wide open. It knocked the oil filter off of it. Anderson hit the oil and had nowhere to go and knocked the wall down.”
“Brandon got by me on the inside and I checked up to let him by and get behind him,” explained Rodenbeck. “I might have checked up too soon and Kyle got in the back of me. It just all went from there. I care a lot about Jordan. He’s a good teammate and I hate to see something like this happen to him and I hope he’s alright.”
“When someone hits the brakes like that when you are wide open there is not time to hit the brakes,” explained Beattie, who let his frustration be known during a post-race PA interview. “I was still wide open when I hit him (Rodenbeck). I know it hurt my neck a little bit. Anderson really took a hard hit.
“It really shouldn’t happen. They put everybody out here together and some of these people get a little too worked up over nothing. He’s running second and it didn’t matter if he won or not. It put a kid in the hospital and it’s un-called for. I was really mad at Paddy and went down and shook my fist at him. As soon as I saw Anderson was hurt it was like a light switch went off and it didn’t really matter how mad I was. It turned to how Jordan was at that point.”
With the accident behind him, Anderson is looking ahead to getting back behind the wheel. At the same time he knows that he was lucky to escape serious injury.
"I just have to give credit to 600 Racing and Humpy Wheeler for building a safe car, as fast as we were going Friday night and to hit the wall as hard as I did, Im just really thankful I was in a safe car"
