This played into the outcome of the Semi-Pro race, leaving one driver happy and the other frustrated.

Kyle Hall started from the fourth position and patiently settled in and ran his race up front, trying to steer clear of the slick spots from earlier rain showers and speedy-dry on the track from incidents in other races.  Ty Dillon did the same thing as Hall up front, trying to simply survive before going after the win in the final laps.

When the laps wound down, Hall started putting pressure on Dillon for the win.  The two drivers raced nose to tail over the final few laps with Hall trying to make a move by for the win, but was forced to settle in second due to Dillon’s defensive driving and Slack’s track rules.

“I don’t know,” said Hall.  “They talked to us in the driver’s meeting about not bumping, but I guess it is ok for him to run me into the grass every time I tried to go underneath of him.  I tried to pass him clean every chance I had at him.  I never touched his bumper.  I would pull up alongside of him coming down the front stretch and the back stretch and he would run me all the way down into the grass.  I knew if I would have hit him they would have black-flagged me and put him back in front.”

But Dillon, the grandson of NASCAR team owner Richard Childress who came into the Shootout on the wings of a hot start to the 2007 racing season in Semi-Pro competition around the Southeast, was thankful that he had a clean racer like Hall on his bumper in the closing laps.

“Kyle is a good driver,” said Dillon.  “I think he would have made that decision anyways (to race clean).  That was a good race and he is a good racer.  I think any time he would race me clean.”

Hall was not pleased about Dillon’s driving or the rules he was forced to race under.

“They try to tell us they are preparing us for NASCAR but they do not even have the same rules,” said Hall.  “The said in the driver’s meeting to give room and be patient.  I was patient the whole time and I was just hoping he would give me room.  I guess he thinks that because he is some young kid that everybody knows no one is going to do anything about it. 

“Second place is an awesome finish, but we definitely had the car to beat.”

One Legends Division in the Summer Shootout Division may be called “Masters,” but the group of 40-year-old and up racers aren’t all ‘Masters’ of the racing craft.  Dennis White is a humble man and knows this as fact. He’s raced the Shootout for six years and hasn’t pretended to be one of the top drivers at LMS.  But in week number-two of the Summer Shootout you can now add him to that list. White beat out the Legends “Master” himself, Clay Hair, to take his first career Legends Masters victory.

“You know what, I couldn’t think of a better way to win the first one out here,” said an ecstatic White.  “To beat the 29 car (Clay Hair), you’ve beat the best of the best.  So to hold him off, I am so pumped.”

scored.  When the field restarted, the flagman threw the green and white flags together signifying a single-lap duel to the finish.  Hair, unaware of the one-lap-to-go situation, came to the checkered flag in shock watching White get the big win in front of him.

“I never even saw that,” said Hair of the restart.  “They never said anything on the Raceceiver.  They just threw the flag.  I would’ve forced the issue a little harder if I knew it was the last lap.  I came up off the corner to see the checkered flag and thought, hell fire!”

“They lined us up single file, and I was able to hold him off,” said White.  “They gave us the green-white-checkered so if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be brother, and tonight it was meant to be.  I was stoked.  I could not believe that he’s back there and I’m leading him off.  I’m all dry mouth in there, knowing that he’s there. If it were anybody else, it wouldn’t have been a big deal.  But to beat him here, this is big.  This is big.

White may have been dry-mouthed and nervous with Hair on his bumper, but after the race you couldn’t wipe the smile off the first-time winner’s face.

“I won’t be able to sleep tonight,” laughed White.  “When I crossed the line, I was pumping my fist. My daughter is here, my dad’s here. My dad’s been with me for 6 years out here, and we’ve never won here. We’ve won at Concord, but this is the big one out here. This is good stuff. I won’t sleep.”

Some drivers and teams struggle with the set up of a race car on dry pavement.  Getting the right combination to move their car to the front of the pack is not an easy task, especially when there are 27 other drivers trying to do the same thing at the same time.  When weather plays into the race, teams scramble to keep the car under the driver’s control.  Tyler Green’s team found that right set up, sending him to victory on a slick track in the Pro division.

Green and the team worked on his car after the heat race, knowing the weather was going to be a factor.

“We were pretty good in the heat race,” said Green.  “It was a little slicker tonight because of the rain.  When it cools off here it is weird because it loosens up.  So we tightened the car up.  After all the speedy dry was down it started to rain.  My car came in because it was so tight at the beginning.”

Duncan Molesworth spent time up at the point before being overtaken by Green.  Although he has been racing for years, Molesworth still felt the pressure of starting and racing at the front of the field.

“We started outside pole,” said Molesworth.  “I have never started that far up at the Shootout.  I was pretty anxious.  I haven’t had the butterflies in about a year now but they finally came back.  Running a Legends car at the Summer Shootout – there is nothing more anxious.

Also taking a shot at Green for the win was Mitchell Coble, who has been on a hot streak in 2007.  During a late-race caution, Coble made a decision to stay on the inside line instead of the outside, which could have cost him a position on the track.

“It started raining about mid way through,” said Coble.  “Then there was oil over the track so that didn’t help much.  I should have chosen the outside on the last ‘choose’ because that would have put us second.  But third isn’t too bad.  That was a weird race.”

Green felt the pressure to get to the top spot and stay there as the rain fell as the race neared completion.  With his car handling well in the rain, he was able to hold off stiff competition from behind.

BLANEY MAKES FATHER PROUD WITH YOUNG LIONS WIN

Two weeks two winners in the “Young Lions” Legends Cars division, but this week’s winner is no stranger to victory lane in the division.  Ryan Blaney has made the transition nicely from Bandoleros to Legends Cars and it showed during the Lowe’s Motor Speedway’s Winter Heat Series.  Well, in Round-2 of the Summer Shootout he won his first series race by leading flag to flag in a night filled with on-and-off rain showers, red flags and oil clean ups.  The Young Lions were the last race to run on the battered ¼ mile oval Tuesday night.

While Blaney was up front, all the action was in his rear-view mirror.  On the first lap of the race, the number 66 of Tyler Kivett, who started 4th, sent his car through the barrels followed by a trail of smoke.  But the incidents didn’t stop there, on lap 7, the 46 of Chris Moore got into the previous week’s winner, Dylan Presnell.  That sent Presnell spinning through turn one.  No caution waved there, but two laps later Moore spun by himself in turn two to bring out the yellow.

“We were just trying to have a safe race and get a top-5, and if we could, contend for the win, but we had a good run for points.  There was a bunch of lapped cars out there, so I’m pretty sure it was third, but overall a good night for points.”

The inside line was the place to be at the start of the race.  Blaney won from the pole, Farbo finished third from the fifth spot and Tyler Millwood was second after starting third.  For Millwood, it was t was all about trying to catching Blaney late in the race.

“He could get off the corner a whole lot better than me,” said Millwood of Blaney.  “I could stay with him, but he would just pull me little bit by little bit getting off the corner better.  They just kept pulling away a little bit.”

Ryan Blaney had a tough outing in his Shootout Legends Car debut last week; he spun while leading.  This week he was all smiles after a good second-week comeback.

“Starting in the front, it’s pretty easy because you have no one to worry about and nothing to really block your way.  It feels pretty good just starting out there and having the clean air.”