Mike O'Leary

August 28, 2010

Friday Night Super Stock Rumble

It's Friday night and the cars of the Tire & Wheel Center UMP Super Stock division at Bloomington Speedway have just finished hot laps and rolled back into the pits.  Brad Cummings climbed from his machine and hurried to prepare for his heat race.  The week before Cummings lost a spark box and fell out of the feature, slipping to fifth in the points, fifteen behind leader Chris Hillman.

“There's only three nights left and I have to make the three that we've got count now,” he says.  “That one hurt, because it was going to be good that night.”

In a nutshell, that's what it's come down to: an old fashioned rumble.  They all count now, no one has any mulligans left.  With three wins, Hillman leads the points coming into the night, with Paragon's Steve Peeden just two points behind.  Although Peeden hasn't won at Bloomington yet, he has finished either second or third six times, and the fact that he leads the UMP national points says a lot about the way he's running. 

Troy Clark, with two wins and five top-5's, sits seven points behind Hillman, and Kevin Arthur is seven more points behind him.  While Arthur hasn't visited victory lane this season, he has racked up ten consecutive top-10 finishes.  The defending series champion, Cummings is just a point behind Arthur, with two wins and eight top-10 finishes.  Only eight points further back, Jack Frye is looking for his second super stock title.

Up and down pit lane, the drivers talked about the championship chase.  Cummings says that consistency will be critical to winning the title.  The 16th place finish the week before was his worst of the year.  Then the professional fireman from Bloomington adds, “I haven't really paid attention to what the other guys have done, I hope they haven't had their bad night yet.  I'm not wishing anybody bad luck, but if they pull over, I'm going to go right by them just like they did me last week.”

Hillman agrees.  “No major errors.  No failures, no car breaks, no accidentally getting into somebody and cutting a tire down.  It's all getting important,” he says.

“Good draws,” Peeden says.  “It just helps to start up front.  It's tight, it's real tight.  Hillman won last week and I ran second and we gained the same amount of points.  Now we're two points away from each other, so, it makes it fun, but then again you're biting your nails the last few races.”

“The only way I can probably win a championship is is if somebody else that's above me has a little bit of bad luck.  You don't want to see anybody have any bad luck, especially your competitors, you want to be able to outrun them,” Frye admits.

While the competitors agree that these things are going to be critical, it is also going to take an aggressive effort.  While bad luck or a mistake can eliminate someone from the title chase, they know that the champion will have to race to the title.  No one is going to coast into it. 

“I'm here to win.  Either we're going to win or we’re not, I'm not going to drive any different than I have all year long.  I really don't chase championships, we just happen to be in position this year, so we'll take it for sure,” says Hillman. 

Of the drivers in the title chase, he points to Peeden as perhaps the most dangerous.  “I worry about all of them, but I'd say the guy right next to me is on top of his game as good as anybody else right now.”

But Peeden is looking at the big picture.  “Obviously, the (national UMP title) is the number one goal, but we also want a track championship.  If I can get a nation before a track championship, I'd be happy with that,” he says.

Cummings points out that the super stock division is always competitive, noting that Jeremy Hines beat him by five points in 2008, and he won the tittle by just seven last year.  “I think if you can win here, you can win anywhere,” he says.  “We travel a lot and whoever around here and Brownstown, if we go out of town like to Kentucky or something, one of us usually wins.”

The 36-year old Hillman, from Camby, is one of the track's veterans.  Like Frye, he has a lot of mileage around Bloomington's quarter mile.  “It still humbles you,” he admits.  “As soon as you think you know your way around, somebody will come around the outside of you and make you look stupid.”

He has been close to a stock car title, but still hasn't earned one.  “Here especially, it would be really cool because of the level of people that I'm racing against.  These guys can drive.  I've won five at Paragon.  I'm not saying that those guys at Paragon can't drive, because they can, but the competition is not what it is here and the track's not as hard, it's not as fast and it's kind of tight.” 

Frye admits that he isn't having the kind of season he hoped for.  After reworking his car over the winter, he's still finding little bugs.  “When you start up front and end up going backwards, you're not getting better,” he says pragmatically.  “You just keep doing your homework.  We found something last week that was binding on this car and I hope it helps us tonight.”

After a 20th place finish on opening night, he has run off ten straight finishes between fourth and eighth, keeping him in the title hunt.  Jack knows how much of a long shot he is, but he still enjoys the battles.  “You know, I'm one of the old guys down here.  I'm going to be 51 years old in a month or so.  I still enjoy it, it's still in my blood and I'm racing against young guys, some of them young enough to be my kid.  But you can't get it out of your blood, you can't,” he explains.

Sometimes, it seems as if every super stock feature is better than the one before.  This night, it is filled with drama.  Kevin Arthur starts outside the front row, and Frye right behind.  Peeden lines up ninth, with Cummings on his bumper, while Hillman starts in the eighth row.  After being involved in a wreck in his heat race and another in the B Main, Clark is on the tail.  The track is unusually heavy, and while it is fast from top to bottom, the cars have been moving and bouncing a lot.  While this is making close racing dicey, it is also paying dividends to those who can hold on.

Arthur jumps into the lead with  Frye running third and Peeden moving into seventh.  On the fourth circuit, Hillman, running the top, goes around Cummings.  After a restart on the next lap, Hillman and Cummings are again side-by-side.  The racing is furious, with cars two and three-wide and the leaders are already beginning to lap slower machines.  Then, Hillman slows in turn four and stops just past the flagstand, bringing out another caution.  He is taken to the pits with a broken belt on the fuel pump.

Peeden has worked his way to fourth, just behind Frye, and Randy Petro is fifth for the restart.  Frye takes second from Justin Davis before the caution waves again.  While they line up, Hillman has made repairs and joins on the tail.  On the green, Peeden quickly hustles around Frye for second, and a lap later goes around Arthur in turn two.  When they reach the halfway point, Peeden has a five car-length lead over Arthur, while Cummings is up to fifth. 

With another caution on lap 16, Peeden looks like he might get his first win of the year on Bloomington's red clay, but Petro has raced his way into second.  Arthur holds third, with Frye and Cummings fourth and fifth.  Petro looks to the inside on the restart, and takes the lead off turn four.  But Peeden fight's back in turn one and they race the next lap wheel-to-wheel.  Then Peeden slows off turn two and rolls to a stop on the backstretch, his left front wheel facing the wrong direction as Terry Tate's wrecker picks it up. 

Brad Cummings grabs second on the restart, but Petro leads the remaining laps.  Hillman battles with Arthur, but he's at least a lap behind.  At the checkers, it's Petro by four car-lengths over Cummings, with Arthur coming home third and Frye fourth.  Troy Clark earned a gutty seventh place finish, while Hillman is rewarded for tenth.  Peeden reports that the rough track caused the left ball joint to break, and he is scored 15th. 

While the winners celebrate out front, back in the pits the others are surveying the toll their machines paid and beginning to load their equipment.  The night has been memorable.  The top two in points  experienced problems they knew they needed to avoid.  Clark and Cummings made the best out of difficult situations.  And with the top five all within six points going into the last two races, the super stock division championship battle may be the best one in history.

Tire & Wheel Center Super Stock Points:

Chris Hillman – 571

Kevin Arthur – 567  -4

Brad Cummings – 566  -5

Troy Clark – 566  -5

Steve Peeden – 565  -6

Jack Frye – 556    -15