Dirt Racing’s Winning Moment: Polesitter Buddy Kofoid led flag-to-flag to win the World of Outlaws’ first visit to Talladega Short Track in over a decade Friday night (March 24), holding off persistent mid-race pressure from Brad Sweet before driving away.
The race also marked the debut of the newly reconfigured TST, which has had its dirt surface replaced and a retaining wall in turns 1 and 2 constructed since its disastrous Ice Bowl late model feature back in January. There were no obvious issues with the racing surface during the program.
Dirt Racing’s Dramatic Moment: The most intense race of the night at Talladega came not during the night, but the Last Chance Showdown. The three-car battle for the final transfer spot into Friday’s feature between Bryce Norris, Robbie Price and Bill Rose was frenzied but clean, and resulted in the Indiana racer besting two WoO regulars to qualify for his first career feature with the tour.
What Dirt Racing Fans’ll Be Group Chatting About This Morning
Friday’s feature had more cautions than race fans would have liked, but the new and improved Talladega was just that, improved. The jury will be out until the track hosts a multi-class late model program that is more representative of its weekly races, but the surface held up well and the track proved capable of side-by-side racing. Solid debut.
The grandstands at TST did not look good when DirtVision’s coverage opened early in the evening.
But I forgot to account for just how late-arriving the crowds at Talladega always are; my last visit to the track in 2019, I left the facility at near midnight and was fighting traffic trying to get into the parking lot. By race end, the crowd was looking plenty healthy.
I’m not sure there was a harder-working man in the state of Alabama Friday than the shovel man responsible for exposing stripes on the dirt-covered retaining wall in turn 1 and 2 after sprint car qualifying. Go back and watch the replay of that man at work, he was putting his back into it. Southern clay is thick as molasses folks.
Speaking of clay, it was…
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