Ogle Wins Race of Champions In Caution-Laden Affair

Traditional Race of Champions logo

Twenty-five years ago on June 26, 2000, the British rock band Coldplay entered the music scene with their hit song "Yellow," which was about an amazing night sky the band had previously seen a few nights prior. That song could have easily been the theme song set on continuous repeat for the second annual YesterYear Race of Champions. Twenty-nine cars took the grid for the 100-lap event which saw 13 cautions for 19 laps.

"It was a messy race," YesterYear Founder and Race Director Allen Wannamaker said in a post-race interview. He continued, "Tour modified stock cars are built for short track racing. Almost all of our 15-races in the Series are on short tracks, but every year we race Pocono. The full Tricky Triangle, just like they did between 1977 and 1979. We are YesterYear Racing League, and that is what we do. We race historic races that have taken place in the past. To be honest, this year's Pocono track resembled Darlington. It was too tough to tame."

Early on, Dwayne McArthur and Tom Ogle set the pace up front. McArthur started on pole with a lap time of 1 minute 2.342 seconds. Ogle started the race fourth on the grid. For the rest of the pack, drafting was paramount. "You needed to find a drafting partner, or partners, early and stick with them throughout the race if possible," broadcaster J.R. Shepherd pointed out. Many drivers did find partners, but some did not and they looked lost and uncomfortable. "In my opinion, there were two reasons for the large number of cautions we had. First, most of our drivers are used to short track racing. In that type of racing, getting to the front early is critical because passing is so tough. At Pocono, that is not necessary. No one is going anywhere. The second reason is that the Race of Champions is unlike the other fourteen races in our Series in that it is an OPEN event, meaning drivers who do not normally participate in our League can race. This opens up the risk element of not knowing how drivers you are not familiar with might react in certain situations," Wannamaker said.

The close quarters racing yielded plenty of cautions early. In addition, there was confusion over the rules package with respect to restarts. As the cautions began to mount, drivers were staying in their pit stalls until the very last moment to repair their cars. This created a situation where those cars that stayed in the pits for a long time could not catch the field in time before the green flag flew for the restart. A couple of drivers even got black flagged because of this. As the race went on and attrition set in, the number of cars on the track began to diminish. Dale Copeland, who looked to be a "workhorse" up front most of the night, was right in the mix with Ogle, McArthur, Robert Guarisco (aka "Crisco), Jeff Aho, and James Lowe. Some drivers like Wannamaker and Red Light Racing League's Geoffrey Souza had taken a cautious approach. Hanging back most of the race until about 15-20 laps to go.

McArthur's night ended abruptly when his car came together with Todd Liston on the back stretch. Liston was disqualified for exceeding the incident limit for the race, while McArthur limped back to the pits, his car damaged beyond repair. The incident, however, brought out no caution and the drivers continued racing.

With four laps to go, the 13th caution flag of the night flew, which set up a one-lap, green flag race to the finish. Aho was on point, followed by Ogle, Wannamaker, and Lowe. When the green flag flew there was an almost immediate 3-wide situation going into turn one. The casualties were Wannamaker and Lowe who both smacked the inside wall. This created opportunity for some drivers in the back to get solid runs going into, and coming out of turn one. On the final turn, Copeland went high and tucked in behind fellow OBRL driver Ogle and gave him a square shot with his nerf bar to bump draft him into the lead and ultimately the victory. Copeland had enough momentum to cross the finish line in second, while Souza edged out his fellow Red Light Racing League member Jeff Aho for third place to round out the podium. Ultimately, the caution-laden race did produce some green flag runs that were exciting for both racers and fans when they happened. "After the practice, I was expecting this to be somewhat of a boring race, but when the green flag dropped, the pack racing was intense and exciting," Crisco said after the race. Copeland added, "It was surprisingly fun out there. There were a lot of cautions, which is too bad, but I had a blast." With the victory, Tom Ogle (625) stretched his point lead out to 25 points with Brian Johnson (600) moving up into second place in the standings. Both Kenny Allen (576) and Scott Negus (566), who had been second and third in the standings respectively coming into the night, had bad results. The Race of Champions was a double points race and so the bad finishes hurt both Allen and Negus in the points even more than it normally would. The Series heads to Martinsville on Tuesday, October 21, for the YesterYear Classic where they will race 150 laps around the "Paperclip." "Martinsville is a much more familiar track for these drivers. I expect there will be many less cautions next week than there were tonight," Wannamaker said. When asked about final thoughts, Wannamaker added this, "One aspect of the race I find interesting is this. We run races that have happened in history. This year's race was modeled after the 1978 Race of Champions won by Geoff Bodine. And in that race, there were 12 caution flags. We had 13 caution flags, but one was extended by me so drivers could regroup. If you take that one away, we had 12 caution flags in our race also. That is kind of cool, but I would have still rather had only 3-4 caution flags, if any."