IRWINDALE, California — The down economy has struck California’s most successful 2008-2009 driver. After becoming the first driver in Toyota Speedway at Irwindale track history to win the Super Late Model and Late Model Championships in the same season as well as the California State Championship and the Lucas Oil Slick Mist Championship, driver Nick Joanides has been informed by his team owner, Loyd McGhee, that sponsorship has not come through for the 2010 season and will likely not be fielding a car in any division this year.
“It’s unfortunate that the economy is the way it is and sponsorship is tough to come by. Most deals are set up the year before, so being this late in the game, it’s likely that I’ll be sitting on the sidelines in 2010, unless sponsorship can be found or another ride opens up” said Joanides. “I can’t thank Loyd enough for the career making opportunity he’s given me over the past three years. I guess if I have to go out, going out on top is the best way to do it”
Joanides headed to the Nascar Toyota All-Star Showdown with high hopes. The “Daytona 500 of Short Track Racing” is the largest event for short track racers, drawing fields of more than 120 cars for the three division event. Joanides was the only driver to compete in all four races of the weekend. Track announcer, Gordon “Lugg Nutzz” Stewart has often referred to Joanides as the Kyle Busch of the west coast since he finds a way to compete in just about every race available to him and has had great success doing so with 30 wins, 69 top 5’s and 77 top 10’s in 81 races over the past two years.
Originally, Joanides had planned to just do double duty and compete in his J&M Racing/Jackson Race Cars Super Late Model and Late Model cars when Joe Nava, a friend of team owner, Loyd McGhee, hatched an idea to field a K&N Pro Series car for Joanides to compete in.
Nava had a plan to give Joanides the best opportunity to showcase his talent in the main event of the weekend and hired crew chief, Tony Mitchell, to set up the car. Mitchell, a successful owner and crew chief on the east coast was to completely change the setup on Nava’s car purchased from Robert Yates Racing.
Mitchell flew out from his home in Mississippi three weeks before the event and stripped the car down. After a weekend of extensive work, the plan was for him to return the weekend before the race to complete the setup of the car. He was to bring the shock and spring package as well as a top notch engine. His flight arrived last Sunday, but Mitchell was not on the plane. He failed to return numerous phone calls as well.
This left the team in a very bad situation, now forced to guess at the rest of the setup on very short notice. Without a crew chief, the team did their best to try and salvage the situation. Another engine also had to be found. They found a back up engine from another team at the last minute, but were pre-warned that it was well down on power compared with top running engines. With no prior testing allowed by Nascar, Joanides’ hopes dropped significantly for the K&N Pro Series main event.
Practice for all three divisions began on Friday. Joanides topped the final practice session in his Super Late Model and was consistently in the top 5 in his Late Model, giving the team high hopes for these two events.
For this weekend, Nascar impounded cars after qualifying, therefore no changes could be made to the cars and they were forced to qualify on their race setups. The team chose to use a long run setup for the 100 lap, which hurt Joanides some in Super Late Model qualifying as he posted only the 10th fastest time in the 44 car field.
In the K&N Pro Series car, things did not improve. With only two, one-hour practice sessions available, the team knew they would need every minute of them to try and come up with a setup. Joanides was ready to go at the beginning of practice, however electrical problems prevented the car from starting. The team spent 50 minutes solving the problem, leaving him just 10 minutes to get track time. The results were not promising.
The car was more than 7/10ths of a second off the pace in the 33rd position on the speed chart. With an ill-handling car, Joanides was only able to muster the 32nd fastest lap in qualifying, forcing him to compete in the 50 lap last chance race to make the main event field as only the top 26 qualifiers were locked in on speed.
The first race was the Super Late Model event on Friday night. It was marred by caution after caution, with the race never running more than 5 consecutive laps under green flag conditions. Joanides had moved up to the 7th position when under a lap 35 caution, he slowed to allow an ambulance to cross the track in front of him to reach a wrecked race car, feeling it was important to let the ambulance reach a potentially injured driver as quickly as possible. Nascar however decided to penalize Nick for not maintaining pace car speed, dropping him to the 17th position. “I have no idea how I can be penalized for allowing a safety vehicle to cross the track”, Joanides said. The team argued with Nascar, but they weren’t listening.
Joanides restarted just in front of the 2009 runner up in the Camping World Truck Series, Matt Crafton. Heading into turn one, Crafton made an aggressive three wide move to the apron of the track and made contact with Joanides, spinning him to the infield, causing him to lose a lap.
15 laps later, Joanides was able to gain his lap back. The race restarted on lap 63 with Joanides still confident he could move through the field, being there were still plenty of laps left. Nascar however made a last second call to shorten the race to 66 laps. After restarting in the 32nd position for the restart, Joanides was able to gain 12 positions in two laps before the checkered flag flew. The 20th place finish was a huge disappointment in a car they won with 14 times and finished no worse that 5th with all season long. “I have no idea what Nascar was thinking, I guess next time I should just ignore safety and then to have a professional driver like Matt Crafton spin us….just a bad day” commented Joanides.
Next up was the 50 lap open race. Missing the main event by six positions in qualifying, Joanides would have to finish in the top 6 to transfer. While the car was still extremely loose, he was able to move up and take a second place finish and easily transfer.
Saturday morning was the final practice and qualifying for the Late Models. Expecting that the race would have multiple cautions, the team elected to put an aggressive set up in the car that would be good on short runs in the race. Nick posted a solid 8th place qualifying lap out of 44 qualifiers.
The first race of the night was the K&N Pro Series 225 lap main event with the Late Model 75 lap race to immediately follow. From his 36th starting position, Joanides was not able to advance his position, as the car was still extremely loose. With multiple caution flags, the team made pit stops at virtually every caution to make adjustments to the car. Unfortunately, the changes had little effect.
The first break came at lap 100. The team put on a new set of tires and made more changes to the car. To their surprise, the car all of sudden became extremely tight. They again elected to make several more pit stops under each caution through the next 100 laps. With the changes having little affect, they realized the only thing that seemed to change the car were the tires. So the team set up the final set to be somewhere in the middle. The lap 200 break came and the team put on the new tires and made their final adjustments.
With a 22 lap dash to the finish, Joanides would restart in the 32nd position. While still far from perfect, the car did respond to the third set of tires and was the best it had been all night. Joanides was able to charge up to a 14th place finish at the checkers. His 22 positions gained were the most of any driver in the field, earning him the Coca Cola Move of the Race Award and a $3,000 bonus. “To come home with a top 15 in a 40 car field of All-Stars is almost unbelievable considering everything we had to deal with. The team worked their butts off and I’m happy that we were able to salvage a respectable finish at the end,” said Joanides.
The final event of the weekend saw Joanides line up 8th in the Late Model event. This event was also marred with multiple cautions. Many of them came after less than a half a lap of green flag racing, nullifying any passes made by Joanides as the field reverts to the previous lap when a caution comes out. As expected, the car was great on the short runs and Joanides was able to move up to the third position. Nascar however then decided to shorten this event as well at the last second from 75 laps to 55 laps, ending Joanides’ chance at victory.
“It was a very long weekend that did have some bright spots with the runner-up finish in the Open K&N Pro Series race, the Move of the Race Award and a podium finish in the Late Models, but it certainly did not live up to our expectations. Drivers seem to lose their mind when TV cameras are turned on and then to have Nascar make the calls they did, especially shortening two of the race distances was extremely disappointing. I know the K&N race is the main event, but these 100 Late Model and Super Late Model teams work just as hard to prepare for their races and it’s kind of a slap in the face to have the races shortened 2 years in a row. I don’t think either race had more than 20 laps of green flag racing. it’s almost not worth it if you're not in the K&N race. Add that to the fact that our crew chief didn’t have the courtesy to call us and let us know he wasn’t coming and this weekend went from possibly being an historical event for us to being quite a struggle! It certainly wasn’t due to lack of effort and I can’t thank my teams enough for all the work they put in, they really did a great job, but things beyond our control kept us from reaching our full potential” Joanides concluded.
