CONCORD, N.C. (Oct. 30) — When Ricky Greene of Bostic, N.C., reached back like an infantry soldier with a hand grenade and tossed a bottom-to-top slide job into the early mix of a 20-lap Drydene Performance Products Street Stock feature during the sixth edition of the Drydene World Short Track Championships Saturday night at The Dirt Track at Charlotte, it triggered a position-exchanging war among the top contenders that sent the race into beast mode and made it perhaps the most entertaining feature of the nine that were presented during the giant weekend.
Greene made his move on lap 10, launching a low-groove dive into turn three and sliding up the racetrack between turns three and four ahead of early leader Blake Pryor to briefly take the point. Greene’s car continued to slide high in turn four against the outside wall, and Pryor returned the favor by ducking low underneath Greene and retaking the lead spot as the duo headed down the frontstretch at the 4/10-mile facility.
While Greene’s maneuver failed to produce an official lead swap at the stripe, it was a memorable and aggressive volley in what immediately erupted into a position-trading donnybrook among the top-running competitors, all of whom took advantage of what many observers felt was the best racing surface offered at the track in the 6-year history of the annual event for weekly short track racers.
“I probably had way too much speed on that first slide job,” Greene said after eventually claiming a $1,500 victory in a highly-competitive contest over Patrick Lyon, Calob Mclaughlin, Blake Pryor and Bradley Weaver. “I knew diving into turn three that I might have gone too low underneath him [Pryor], and I knew my car was going to slide toward the wall. At the same time I wanted to show him I was there, and perhaps influence his thinking a little bit.”
A couple laps later, Greene made the pass for the lead stick on a lap-12 restart which followed a caution-producing incident in turn four when Chris Jackson’s sliding car was collected by Dalton Pannell, leaving both machines stopped near the outside wall.
Greene, Pryor and Dalton Peavy battled for the lead on the restart, and the trio was joined by Andy Stewart, Lyon and Mclaughlin in an all-out clash among the leaders. Greene was able to take and hold the lead, while Lyon took runnerup honors for good with three laps remaining, and Mclaughlin nabbed third from Pryor a lap later in a complete reversal of the top three finishers from last year’s version of the event.
Rounding out the top five in the 24-car field were Pryor and Bradley Weaver.
“The last five years we’ve been trying to win this race, and we finally did,” Greene said. “We took the lead on that restart when he [Pryor] messed up a little bit in turn two. I saw that opportunity, and said, ‘I gotta go now.’ You lose so much speed trying to pass someone when that track is slick like it was this weekend and you’re always sliding around, and you have to make the moves when you can. We all probably made a little contact out there, but that’s just good ole’ Street Stock racing.”
It was certainly a memorable event, a fact that was underlined by last year’s race winner Mclaughlin.
“It was pretty fun out there, and we had the same three drivers in the top three that we had last year,” said Mclaughlin, who won the event in 2020. “When you can race like that, it’s a good show for the fans and fun for the drivers.”
Drydene World Short Track Championships: 1. Ricky Greene, 2. Patrick Lyon, 3. Calob Mclaughlin, 4. Blake Pryor, 5. Bradley Weaver, 6. Earl Petty, 7. Andy Stewart, 8. Kelly Fegter, 9. Jake Jackson, 10. Donny Atkins, 11. Damon Crump, 12. Shannon Adams, 13. Chris Jackson, 14. Tre Beaty, 15. Phoenix Lawter, 16. Johnny Westmoreland, 17. Cameron Holloway, 18. Junior Johnson, 19. Chris Rice, 20. Dalton Pannell, 21. Kyle Cooper, 22. Johnny Hipp, 23. Paul Irby, 24. Dalton Peavy.
Entries: 32
Fast qualifier: Damon Crump, 19.837 seconds
Lap leaders: Blake Pryor 1-11, Ricky Greene 12-20.
Cautions: 2
Heat winners: Ricky Greene, Dalton Peavy, Damon Crump, Blake Pryor.
B-main winners: Kelly Fegter, Donny Atkins.
Article Credit: Brian McLeod