Hickory’s Bobby Isaac Memorial 150 under technical review, scrutiny

UPDATE: Hickory Motor Speedway confirms Kade Brown and Matt Piercy Racing as the winners of the Bobby Isaac Memorial 150

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Reigning Hickory Motor Speedway track champion Landon Huffman asserted in his podcast on Tuesday that a rival team, one owned by the son of the track promoter, has received preferential treatment in technical inspection all season, culminating with a potentially overruled disqualification after the Bobby Isaac Memorial 150 on Saturday night.

Kade Brown, who drives for Matt Piercy Racing, emerged victorious in the Isaac Memorial on Saturday promoted by track operator Kevin Piercy.  The race is one of the two biggest weekly events at Hickory and it resulted in another win for Brown, who leads the championship with 11 victories this season.

There have been whispers about the legality of the Piercy No. 23 car all season but never in such a public way as Huffman claimed on his podcast Tuesday night.

Huffman, who was scored fourth at the end of the race on Saturday, says both second and third place Tyler Matthews and Michael Bumgarner have said the 23 car was deemed illegal for an offset spindle after the race.

Matthews, who drives for VanDyke Racing Performance, has also said they are awaiting further confirmation of the results after what transpired on Saturday night. As of Tuesday night, the track has not made any announcement about the results of the race.

Huffman said Brown was tossed from Florence on June 5 for having the underbody sealed off similar to a Next Gen Cup Series car and that they’ve used the panning at Hickory as well.

“That was the first deal, and once that happened, it forced Hickory to quote unquote regulate it,” Huffman said on the podcast.

He also said the Piercy team raced with a de facto rear diffuser as part of the underbody and that it was a point of contention this season as well. That’s to say nothing of the incident back in March when Huffman and Doug Barnes Jr. both sat out the second half of a twin 40 feature over an eligibility ruling made by Piercy that night.

“It’s been chaotic the whole time,” Huffman said of the ongoing inspection challenges with Brown and the Piercy team. “It all culminated this weekend with the 23 winning again and the 15 car, of Tyler Matthews, tried to protest the 23 and they were told they couldn’t protest that specific part.”

The specific rule was the shock droop rule.

“I guess that’s neither here nor there,” Huffman continued. “They get into regular tech and they decide to check the spindle. The top-three take their spindles off, second and third passed the rule based on measurement and the first-place car had offset spindles.

“Now, I don’t know what exactly what happened once they were deemed offset other than the tech official told them their spindle was not correct based on the rule. …

“We’re now in a situation where the track hasn’t said anything. They may throw the 23 out but they may not. I have a feeling they are not going to. If they don’t, it’s going to cause a giant uproar in a lot of different areas. … It’s been an ongoing problem all year.”

Huffman made a point on several occasions not to criticize Brown personally but suggesting this was a matter of the black and white enforcement of rules.

“I want to make clear that I don’t want to take away from Kade Brown winning however many races he’s won this year,” Huffman said. “He’s a good kid and he’s improved a lot this year. He races me clean. He hasn’t roughed us up this year and I’ve tried to return the favor. I’ve had great conversations with Kade and he’s got the talent to win all these races.

“The problem lies with the integrity of our rule book, what we are racing against every week and what we are enforcing.”

For his part, Piercy offered the following statement to Short Track Scene on Tuesday night.

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“There was a spindle in question on the No 23 car (of) Kade Brown,” Piercy wrote. “After discussion with head tech official Danny Ranger, we made the decision to leave the results unofficial to allow him to research and make sure we were using the proper method to measure the part.

“Technology has grown tremendously in NASCAR Late Model Stock Cars and unfortunately our methods of teching and measuring these parts have somewhat fallen behind. What worked 10 years ago is not necessarily an accurate way to measure parts today as we learned upon getting information from industry owners and other race tracks.

“With the Labor Day holiday, unfortunately, it took a couple days to work it out. What is important is that in the end we make the correct decision for all of our competitors.”

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Huffman also added that the ‘underlying issue’ remains all the ways that a track promoter’s son owning a team is problematic for the other competitors — something he says he faced in 2015.

“In 2015, I raced for the track championship and Matt was racing and so Kevin owned the car and promoted the track,” Huffman said. “There was a lot of stuff that went down that a lot of people didn’t like, it was shady, and we tried to take it to NASCAR who said ‘our hands were tied because it’s the track’s discretion.’

“Right now, we are in such a scattered mess with rules. Hickory just decides on the fly which rules they want to abide by and which rules they don’t want to abide by. For instance, the tire rule where they just made an addendum after the fact.”

After that incident, Hickory also added a rule that threatened fines or suspensions for social media posts made about the track by competitors.

“We’ve been threatened with fines or suspensions for talking about the race track,” Huffman said. “I also want to make clear that I love Hickory Motor Speedway. Hickory is my home track, it’s where I’ve won almost all my races.

“We’ve made friends there. My dad and grand paw raced there. It’s in my backyard and we want to see the track succeed. I do. I have done my best to support Kevin Piercy over the last several years. I’m not saying I don’t support the race track because I do but this situation that we’re in is … the people involved are never going to come out smelling like roses. It’s forever tainted because of the current situation.”

He says that it made no sense to him that Matthews wouldn’t have even been allowed to protest the shock because his engine was protested, and torn down, the night he won the championship.

“It’s a sticky, sketchy situation over there at Hickory,” Huffman said. “Over the year, the car count shows a lot of skepticism right now over how the track is being officiated right now. Tech is understaffed. It’s hard to get people to work and come in right now. I do feel like Danny, the head tech guy, has tried hard to do his best to enforce it but I feel like he’s under a blanket.

“I don’t know that for sure, but it just feels that way, and we’ll find out for sure what kind of blanket there is — good or bad.”

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