Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – DUNDEE, NY – Tire and lane selection may have been Billy Decker’s undoing Tuesday night in the ‘Outlaw Showdown’ Short Track Super Series race at Outlaw Speedway.
However, it’s the will of a veteran like Decker that helped keep him in the hunt for the $5,000 victory.
In the end, Decker came home with a solid podium finish of third, but choosing a tire that was too soft for the track conditions kept the Jeremy Smith Racing machine out of the winner’s circle.
“We fired really good,” Decker said. “We just got loose. I think we were a little soft on rubber and it’d give up after a lap and a half, but with these guys, you can’t roll over at all.”
Throughout his time at the point, Decker chose the high groove, even on multiple restarts where eventual winner Matt Sheppard would show himself.
“I honestly thought I was going to be better up there,” he said. “That just meant I had to drive the car a little bit harder. I held him off for a lap and then the car freed up a bit. He stayed snug and drove on. Matt’s been doing that all year so we need to improve.”
Even though he didn’t win, Decker was happy with the effort his team put forth at Outlaw.
“It was a solid run for us,” he said. “This JSR car is getting closer and closer and pretty soon, we’ll sneak in and get one of these.”
Runner-up finisher Stewart Friesen had a good run on the night after starting seventh.
There was a long stretch of green flag racing which forced drivers to decide between running hard or saving their equipment.
Did Friesen save for too long before making his move to challenge Sheppard for the lead?
“That long run in traffic, I could see Matt searching around a little bit,” Friesen said. “I was trying to save my stuff on the bottom and we kind of came to him. Then, there were those cautions and, in clean air, he was able to sneak away.”
It seemed that Friesen had to work hard through the entire 50-lap race to get to second, especially if he wanted to have any chance to compete with the 9s for the victory.
“We battled from the first lap of our heat race,” he said. “It was ‘elbows up’ racing but this track’s come a long ways. It was a lot of fun. There’s a lip on the top that’s fun to rip and there was moisture on the bottom to creep around on. It was fun tonight.”