BEAR LAKE, Pa — Another eye-catching themed car, another World 100 disappointment at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, for Chub Frank.
The Bear Lake, Pa., star known as ‘Chubzilla’ brought a machine that sported a special graphics scheme to dirt Late Model racing’s most prestigious event for the second consecutive year – and once again a heat-race accident left him watching the $41,000-to-win World 100 A-Main from the sidelines.
After driving his orange-camouflage ‘Chub’s Army: Salute to the Troops’ car to the sixth-fastest lap (15.599 seconds) in Friday night’s 175-car time-trial session, a six-car invert left Chub with the sixth starting spot in Saturday night’s sixth 15-lap heat race.
Unfortunately, Chub barely got a chance to secure a top-three finishing position to transfer to the A-Main. The 2004 World 100 champion saw his night end on lap three of the prelim when he was swept up in fellow World of Outlaws Late Model Series regular Clint Smith’s fence-smacking crash.
“Clint just caught the wall with the right-rear and it sucked his right-front in,” said Chub, who was running in seventh place at the time of the incident. “When his right-front hit it pretty much stopped him, and then the ass-end of his car came out and I clipped him going by.
“I just caught him with my right-rear. It ripped the rear deck out and probably made the crash look pretty spectacular, but it didn’t really hurt anything. It was all tin. The suspension was fine.”
There wasn’t enough time for Chub’s crew to repair the mangled bodywork before the heat race restarted, so he became a non-qualifier. A 19th-place finish in the heat wasn’t good enough to earn him a berth in a B-Main.
Chub, who last year missed the World 100 starting field when he hit the turn-one wall late in his heat with his green ‘Chubzilla’ themed car, felt good about his chances for success if he had been able to make Saturday night’s headliner.
“It should’ve been good because it was identical scale-wise to the car that won the World,” smiled Chub, who pitted alongside – and worked closely with – eventual World 100 winner Shane Clanton. “He scaled it, so it was identical.”
While Chub’s orange-camo Lester Buildings, Corry Rubber, All Star Performance, Corry Laser, Slavic Corporation, Farr MotorSports, Lake Shore Paving, Custom Race Engines Chevrolet Impala SS Rocket Chassis No. 1* certainly helped him sell plenty of t-shirts and diecast cars during the World 100 weekend, he’s wondering if the special graphics packages are jinxing him at Eldora.
“Mary (Chub’s wife) said we’re not bringing any themed cars to the World anymore,” Chub joked. “We’re just running our standard (appearing) cars because we just haven’t had any luck the last two years with these special deals.”
Chub will return to action on the WoO LMS this weekend, heading to the Midwest for tour events on Saturday night (Sept. 13) at I-55 Raceway in Pevely, Mo., and Sunday night (Sept. 14) at La Salle (Ill.) Speedway. He currently sits fifth in the WoO LMS point’s standings with six events remaining on the 2008 schedule.
