Garvey Best On Wild Day in Montgomery

Garvey Best On Wild Day in Montgomery
First Montgomery SLM race in Two Years Defined by Attrition
By Tim Quievryn, Speed51.com Correspondent - Twitter: @TheThirdTurn

Not much seems to be getting in the way of Mike Garvey these days.
Sunday at Montgomery Motor Speedway (AL) Garvey experienced two wrecks, a flat tire, and an incredibly tight racecar. He still left the track with the winner’s trophy and a cool $6,000 after capturing the victory in the Montgomery 150, the first Super Late Model race held at Montgomery in nearly two years.

The victory marked Garvey’s ninth this season and third consecutive victory after sweeping a pair of Pro Late Model races on the Gulf Coast last weekend.

It didn’t come easy to Garvey Sunday, but honestly nothing really came easy to any driver in the field. All 14 cars that started the race experienced some sort of major mechanical issue or crash damage with 13 cautions marring the distance. But the real fireworks came when Bubba Pollard and Augie Grill got together racing for the win in the closing laps, opening the door for Garvey.

“We had a fourth-place car,” Garvey said in Victory Lane. “It really wasn’t the best, we just kept working at it. When Bubba got into Augie there at the end and turned him around, we had worked on the car enough that we were as fast as they were. We changed our line too and were finally able to get away from everybody and win the race.

“I think we’re in real good shape heading into the end of the year. The difference this year is that Tracy [Goodson, car owner] made a real commitment and this is what we do now. We were trying to work on different things during the week and then race during the weekends. I think we’ve got a real good package for the big races coming up and the [season-ending Snowball] Derby. I’d rather not win a race all year long if we could win the Derby.”

Garvey had run around most of the race in the fourth to sixth position before a restart came at the lap-121 mark. Going into turn one, Garvey’s car failed to turn with a flat tire, collecting most of the top runners. Garvey drove away from the incident with relatively minimal damage. The team threw scuffs on the car and he was quickly able to make his way back up to third.

The defining incident of the race would then come on Lap 136. Augie Grill had led every lap of the race up to that point. Bubba Pollard, having charged back through the field after a broken wheel hub left him deep in the pack at the halfway point, had finally caught the Grill machine. Pollard sized Grill up for a few laps, then began taking a few peeks to the inside to see if he could make a run. Coming off of turn two, Pollard got into Grill’s left-rear quarter panel, sending Grill around. Grill would go to the back of the order for the spin, but Pollard would be sent back there with him for causing the caution.

Garvey, inheriting the lead for the first time all day, then pulled away from closest pursuer Logan Boyett on the ensuing restart and watched Grill and Pollard race each other too hard trying to get back through the field to pressure for the win. Garvey won by half a straight-away over Boyett with Pollard just edging Grill for third.

“Everyone was taking everything they could get today,” Garvey remarked looking upon the attrition factor. “When you’re racing a Super Late Model during the day, it’s just slippery to try to pass someone. You’d slip up, bounce off a guy and you’d have more issues. It’s really hard here to pass in the Supers. You’d get under someone and they’d crowd you. That was a lot more action than I thought would be here for 14 cars. I was worried we weren’t going to have any and, good golly, we had about 20 of them.

“I think a lot of what you saw today was flats. One restart, I went off to one, it wouldn’t turn and I went straight into John Bolen. For some reason, we’re just getting a lot flats here. That’s about our eighth one here this year.”

Boyett was pretty pleased with his day, which was another eventful tale. He ran the last 75 laps with smoke pouring from the rear end of his machine. Despite having track officials black flag the car and getting checked during a number of late caution flags, Boyett was able to stay on the lead lap and, like Garvey, was able to take advantage when the lead duo spun.

“When we went green, we didn’t have a really good car” Boyett admitted. “It was tight at first and I wanted to run it harder than I wanted to for it to work. Then I thought the rear end was going to go, but it turns out we just had a seal going bad in the housing. We made a spring rubber adjustment during the halfway break which was making it better, but the oil getting on the right rear tire killed us going into the corner. Then somehow we had both front tires go flat.”
Perhaps Boyett encapsulated the day best when he added at the end of his post-race interview, “We just trucked on.”

Pollard finished a very disappointing third, spending most of the post-race on the pit wall a ways off from his racecar, alone with his thoughts. Grill was equally disappointed and also feeling poorly after two hours in the heat, spending his post-race cooling off and resting in his hauler.
“We had a real good racecar, just starting the race off by biding our time,” Pollard said after the event. “We actually broke off two studs and only ran with three lugs the rest of the race. We saved our stuff some more and made our way back up. We were better than him [Grill] at the end, but just got into him and spun him around.

“I hate it for Augie. I hate it for my team, because I took both of us out of contention to win. When you’re getting pressure near the end, you’re going to protect the bottom. I tried to get under him there off of turn two, but just nipped him from behind. I thought it was just good, hard racing with 15 to go.”

Grill was fourth. Pole winner Kyle Benjamin finished fifth despite incurring three flat tires, being in three accidents, and finishing the race with a right side door panel.

The next race at Montgomery will be the season finale for all divisions including the PLM Show Me The Money Series as the track holds the Alabama 200 September 15th and 16th.

RESULTS:
1 Mike Garvey
2 Logan Boyett
3 Bubba Pollard
4 Augie Grill
5 Kyle Benjamin
6 Steve Wallace
7 Brandon Odom
8 John Bolen
9 Ken McFarland
10 John Wilkinson, III
11 Hunter Robbins
12 Allen Karnes
13 Chris Serio
14 Spencer Davis