Dickerson Strolls To Victory Lane At Havasu 95
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Oct 07, 2008
FMCM
Jimmy Dickerson put on a clinic on how good a well prepped race car can run and in the process completely dominated the Sunoco Race Fuel 75, round eight of the SuperClean Modified Series, held October 4th at the Havasu 95 Speedway in Lake Havasu City-Arizona.
The SuperClean Modified Series third visit of the season to the Havasu 95 Speedway began earlier in the day with an extremely close qualifying session led by Dickerson’s STR team mate Danny Gay who toured the speedway’s quarter mile paved oval with a lap of 15.473 seconds. Dickerson was right behind him with a lap of 15.538 seconds. In fact the qualifying times within the top 14 positions on the speed chart had a separation of less than one half of one second. It turned out to be an omen of things to come.
A pre race roll of the inversion dice turned up the number two and that put team mates Dickerson and Gay on the front row to lead the full field of modifieds under the initial green flag. Much to the surprise of the full grandstand of fans the field wasn’t able to complete the first lap before the first of 8 yellow flags flew through the air. This initial caution flag came out when Billy Johanneck’s modified went spinning through the bottom of turn two after being hit from behind. This also was an omen of things to come.
With the Sunoco Race Fuel 75 officially underway following the restart Dickerson paced the field for the first two circuits before Gay passed him for the lead. Unfortunately for the new race leader his tenure at the front of the field only lasted approximately one lap before he brought out the next yellow flag in the race. Going into turn one Gay was pinched off by a lapped car and Dickerson, with no place to go, tapped the back of his team mate and caused him to spin through the bottom of turn two. However series officials ruled that it was the lapped car who triggered this action and because of that Dickerson was allowed to keep his position. Danny Gay, on the other hand, was not as fortunate and had to restart at the rear of the field.
Dickerson led the field to the restart with series points Andrew Phipps on his bumper. But Dickerson’s modified was extremely well prepped and very fast. There were only two reasons why he had to slow down during the course of the race: the first was to carefully negotiate his way around lapped traffic and the second was the series of yellow flags throughout the event. By lap 33 Dickerson had a full half lap lead on the entire field only to see it go away when the next yellow flag due to Josh Green’s front stretch spin and shortly followed by David Gerchman and Randy Ussery collecting each other in turn four.
On the ensuing restart Andrew Phipps found himself still in second but with the lapped car of Doug Carpenter sandwiched between himself and his series championship rival Jimmy Dickerson. A SuperClean Modified tip of the hat goes out to Carpenter because, following the restart, he did the proper thing and moved up to the high line to allow drivers racing in the top five the opportunity to chase down the race leader.
Unfortunately for the top five group it didn’t do a lot of good because Dickerson was off and running again in a car that handled the low line of the speedway’s turns like it was riding on rails. Dickerson pace the field all the way to lap 51 when the next series of yellow flags, and more omens of things to come, presented themselves. On that lap Doug Carpenter went spinning through turn four following some rear bumper contact. At the exact same time the cars driven by Tim Morse, Dave Arce and David Gerchman Jr were spinning through turn one.
