The tone has been set for the CARS Tour season to come.
Carson Kvapil outdueled Brenden Queen on Saturday night in the Aaron’s 125 at Florence Motor Speedway and its easy to see where this is the championship battle to come. To wit, they are immediately 1-2 in the championship battle, separated by 10 points, heading into the next race on April 22 at Hickory Motor Speedway.
But this is where things get interesting for ‘Butterbean,’ who has opened his initial campaign driving for Lee Pulliam Performance by winning the South Carolina 400 and Battle of the Stars over the winter before positing finishes of seventh and second to begin the points paying season.
He has never raced at Hickory before, and the entire schedule features a lot of new places for the three-time Langley Speedway track champion, who has only just now started to venture away from home.
“Never been to Hickory, never been to Tri-County, never been to Caraway, a lot of places I’ve never been to coming up,” Queen said. “I’m looking forward to the challenge. That’s where I’m going to lean on Lee. He’s got notes on those places and we’ll show up ready to compete.”
And while defending runner-up Connor Hall should remain a contender with Chad Bryant Racing and three-time champion Bobby McCarty looking like himself again at R&S Race Cars, Kvapil expects Queen to be his biggest threat on a weekly basis come the summer months, a lack of experience be damned.
“Obviously, the Darne cars are good and Chad Bryant’s cars are good but (Queen) and McCarty, they’re going to be the best all year, I think,” Kvapil said. “McCarty showed speed at both races, just like we have and hopefully our Bass Pro Shops Chevrolet is just a little better than his.”
It was a dreadful season last year for McCarty in the final year of a stellar run at Nelson Motorsports that included three championships in five years, but they just didn’t have pace or reliability and it resulted in his departure.
“It’s been a really good year so far, we’re learning a lot with it being a new deal,” McCarty said. “Once we catch some traction, it’s going to be a good deal.”
It’s not the first time McCarty has worked with R&S Race Cars owner Marcus Richmond. Combine that with bringing over his crew chief at Nelson, David Triplett Jr. to R&S and they are immediately up to speed.
“I worked with Marcus before and then we went our separate ways,” McCarty said. “But I’m a lot more experienced now. He’s learned a lot too. So, it’s neat to see each of us, Triplett too, bring these different ideas to the table and putting all that knowledge to work.
“We’re going to win some races, I’ll promise you that.”
CARS TOUR STANDINGS
2/16
- Carson Kvapil
- Brenden Queen -10
- Jacob Heafner -13
- Deac McCaskill -17
- Connor Hall -19
- Bobby McCarty -19
- Ronnie Bassett Jr. -21
- Chad McCumbee -24
- Jared Fryar -26
- Mini Tyrrell -28
- Ryan Millington -32
- Brandon Pierce -32
CHOOSE RULE, COMPETITION CAUTION
The second race of the season saw the addition of a choose rule in the form of a physical choose cone and the decision to implement the traditional short track rule was widely praised.
Kvapil first:
“Implementing the choose cone was a really good idea,” Kvapil said. “It eliminated a lot of the games for sure. There were a few times I would have thought about dropping back and getting into the spot I wanted to be, but now I can choose the bottom if I wanted the bottom.”
Brandon Pierce of Lee Pulliam Performance largely enjoyed it too, with a caveat.
“My take on it is, I don’t know if it ruled out the reason they did it,” Pierce said. “Say you have a guy that’s running 22nd, and it’s a track where everyone goes to the bottom, that goes to the top and it gives him a shot, but it also gives him a shot to have a mishap and it involves a lot of other guys too.
“So it makes it interesting. It’s nice to know that now, whatever happens on a restart, it’s on you and not circumstances. It’s always in your hands. If someone misses a shift or whatever, it was on you for picking that lane, it was the cards you dealt yourself.”
What about the competition cautions, now in its fifth year of implementation, that results in a caution after 40 consecutive green flag laps but not one in the final 25 laps of a race.
Bobby McCarty likes it.
“We need the 40 lap cautions,” he said. “It could turn into a snoozefest. At times, it’s a pain in the neck, because you’re just trying to get your position the first 40 laps and then maintaining over the next 40 laps so you can go for the finish.
“We tried it without it, and I think we did it at Hickory and Looney checked out and kept waiting for a caution that never came, so I started to chase him down and burned up my tires trying to get him. So I think we have a good format going right now.”
Even for a track like Florence, with such extreme tire wear that the back half of the field backed up to the leaders and just rode in front of them for each of the first 40 lap segments?
“In the South Carolina 400, you can ride just fast enough to not lose a lap and then it plays a greater benefit for you the longer the race goes,” Pierce said. “But here, for a 125 lapper, straight up, you know you’re getting one at 40 — and it lets a really experienced guy like McCarty, Jared Fryar or Butterbean, or a really good driver like Carson to force the leader to run a faster pace than you.”
That’s kind of what happened to Mini Tyrrell, who led the most laps, and set a pretty quick pace in the first segment until he caught the back half of the field and then was unable to put any of them a lap down.
“So selfishly, I do think it would be cool if we could just have one break, maybe at Lap 60 and just go to the end,” Pierce said. “If there was a natural caution in there somewhere, it is what it is.
“But I will say, tonight, there was a lot more falloff than I expected,” Pierce said. “And maybe it had something to do with the cautions at the end, guys who were charging hard before the caution and then they were a sitting duck.
“So, I think we would have had a good race no matter what.”
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