2018 Snowball Derby pole winner Harrison Burton
2019 Redbud 400 winner Johnny VanDoorn
2019 All-American 400 winner Mason Mingus
2016 Southern Super Series champion Casey Smith
Five-time Snowball Derby winner Rich Bickle
The starting lineup for the 2019 Snowball Derby last chance race reads like a Super Late Model all-star race — and these were all drivers who failed to qualify inside the top-30 on Friday night.
Time trials for the Super Bowl of Short Track Racing is considered the most exciting time trials session in pavement racing and it lived up the moniker leaving some of the biggest names in the industry backed into a 50-lap last chance race in order to make the biggest race of the year.
The four highest finishers that pass technical inspection after 50 laps will earn starting positions 31-34.
READ MORE: Complete Snowball Derby coverage
Burton led a race-high 111 laps from the pole in 2018 and couldn’t find speed all week with the same baseline set-up. His Wimmer Motorsports No. 12 team has some work to do during Happy Hour to get their Super Late Model turning to their liking.
“That practice is going to be important,” Burton said. “We’re going to have to make some big swings at it. We have tired a million different things this week and nothing is working. The car is doing the exact opposite of what we expect it to. I really do feel like this team is capable of figuring out. If we can just get it in, we’re going to have a shot at it.”
NASCAR Truck Series regular Jordan Anderson is getting the full Snowball Derby experience in his Five Flags Speedway debut this week. He went through practice thinking his Reuse Brothers Super Late Model was stout, suffered a bad qualifying draw, and now faces needed to race his way into the top-four from outside of the top-20 in the last chance race.
“It’s probably going to be like the Truck Series race at Daytona, where it’s like six laps to go and you just do whatever it takes to get what you need,” Anderson said. “We’ve just got to get our car driving really good. We’ve got to get it to cut better. But the last thing I want to do is tear these guts car up. It’s a nice car.
“We were just talking about running a couple of more races. We just came down here. Maybe we can take it down to our shop and get it better before next year. Because no matter what happens, I’ve got the itch to race here now.”
READ MORE: David Rogers beats cancer in time to return for Snowball Derby try
The pole sitter for the last chance race will be Carson Hocevar of KBR Development. He raced his way into the main event from the last chance last year.
“I feel like third-place and above is going to be clean,” Hocevar said. “At least it was last year. I was lucky that I fell back to third and didn’t fall further back. But there were so many cautions that there had to be a lot of crashing.”
Just a month after winning the All-American 400 in the most spectacular fashion imaginable, Mingus and Wauters Motorsports isn’t even sure if they want to stay and attempt to make the race the hard way.
They’ve both had their various cars destroyed too much over the years after not posting a top-30 time.
“We’ve ran that last chance race four times and we only survived one with a clean car,” Mingus said. “And we started that one on the pole.”
The starting lineup for the last chance race, barring withdrawals, can be found below.
- Carson Hocevar
- Casey Smith
- Michael House
- Johnny VanDoorn
- Trey Bayne
- Dan Fredrickson 16.679
- Harrison Burton 16.682
- Mason Mingus 16.689
- Rodrigo Rejon 16.699
- Jett Noland 16.701
- Kyle Bryant 16.710
- David Rogers 16.725
- Brad May 16.725
- Austin Nason 16.748
- Jack Dossey III 16.751
- Rich Bickle 16.753
- Chris Davidson 16.772
- Boris Jurkovic 16.808
- Jordan Anderson 16.809
- Steven Davis 16.835
- Jerry Artuso 16.841
- Colten Nelson 16.856
- Tim Curry 16.934
- AJ Wernette 17.904
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