A lot has happened over the past two days after Thanksgiving as both Super Late Model and Pro Late Model teams participated in their final test sessions in advance of Snowball Derby week at Five Flags Speedway.
On Sunday, the TBA from Senoia, Georgia on the entry list was unveiled as Sammy Smith driving a car out of the Pollard Motorsports stable and crewed by the JR Motorsports No. 8 team which is crew chief’ed by Phillip Bell.
Pollard and Bell are cousins and Smith’s dad, Kurt, is a longtime friend who also signed up to represent the short track ace earlier in the autumn with some of his NASCAR appearances.
Pollard tested on Monday and spent most of Sunday working with Smith to make sure their car unloaded in a good place in advance of practice day on Thursday.
It’s a good-looking car and early challenger for best appearing car too.
Speaking of Pollard, when he unloaded his car, his Terry Senneker chassis is now branded as …
That will be a story to circle back on this week.
Also, in true Pollard fashion, the 37-year-old unloaded his annual new wrap on Monday in yet another best appearing car candidate.
The body is silver and pictures don’t do justice to the way the sun reflects off the body.
Ty Majeski, the two-time and defending winner of the race, had his hands full on Monday and he and car builder Toby Nuttleman had a lot to work through in advance of race week and practice as well.
Jeremy Doss, driving the Bob Lyon No. 44, needed to swap out engines on Monday after grenading the power plant he unloaded with. Instead, they dropped in the engine from the car raced over the weekend at Freedom Factory in the Bill Bigley Sr. Memorial 128.
NASCAR Cup Series veteran David Gilliland spent this summer building an in-house Super Late Model out of the Tricon Garage shop and unveiled the fruit of the labors over the weekend.
Longtime crew chief Seth Smith, who oversaw the old David Gilliland Racing Late Model program for the likes of Todd Gilliland and Raphael Lessard, is also on the grounds and working with the Tricon team co-owner.
This is also a good looking race car and makes use of the old DGR font too.
On the Snowflake 100 side, Chase Pinsonneault was involved in a crash and team owner Carson Hocevar says that was a brand new race car.
Instead, Pinsonneault will have to drive the backup but as the team owner points out, lots of time to work on it.
They indeed pulled out the backup car but also, look at the fuel cell ….
Why the long face, Noah Gragson?
Snowball Derby week begins in earnest on Tuesday with a welcome party at Tickets Sports Bar in Downtown Pensacola.
Wednesday is a full day of inspection for both Late Model classes and the pill draw and pit party that determines the qualifying order.
Thursday is practice day and Friday is more practice that leads into Snowball Derby qualifying. Saturday is qualifying and race day for the Pro Late Models, the Snowflake 100.
Sunday is race day for the 57th running of the Snowball Derby.
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