Roffers` win worth weight at Clash race

SPORTS
THE FAYETTEVILLE OBSERVER
MONDAY, JUNE 28, 2010
MOTORSPORTS
Roffers’ win
worth weight
at Clash race
Vettel
reigns
in Spain
The Associated Press
VALENCIA, Spain — Red
Bull’s Sebastian Vettel won
the European Grand Prix on
Sunday, dominating from the
pole in a race marked by
teammate Mark Webber’s
spectacular crash and Fernando Alonso’s claim that the
results had been “manipulated.”
Vettel won his second
grand prix of the season, completing 57 laps of the Valencia
street circuit ahead of
McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton
and Jenson Button.
Webber emerged unhurt
after his car went airborne
early in the race following a
collision with Heikki Kovalainen.
“The most important fact
is that Mark is fine,” Vettel
said. “On days like this you
get reminded that still the
speeds are extremely high
and, if something goes wrong,
it can go terribly wrong, so I
think the most important
thing is that he’s fine.”
The crash led to the appearance of the safety car and
a controversy involving
Hamilton.
Hamilton had to take a
drive-through penalty in pit
lane for passing the safety
car, but managed to finish
second in Valencia for the
third time.
NHRA
NORWALK, Ohio — Greg
Anderson raced to his first
Pro Stock victory of the season Sunday at the Summit
Racing Equipment NHRA
Nationals.
The three-time champion
pocketed more than $125,000
for the weekend by sweeping
eliminations Sunday and Saturday’s K&N Horsepower
Challenge all-star event,
which includes a $25,000
bonus.
Anderson outran Allen
Johnson in the final round for
his 61st career victory. Anderson’s Pontiac GXP posted
a winning performance of
6.722 seconds at a top speed
of 204.54 mph to hold off
Johnson’s Dodge Avenger,
which slowed at mid-track
and finished in 6.982 at
159.38.
Larry Dixon (Top Fuel),
Tim Wilkerson (Funny Car)
and Matt Smith (Pro Stock
Motorcycle) also were winners.
! Wisconsin driver
gets victory despite
finishing second.
By Thomas Pope
Motorsports editor
AP photo
Kyle Busch (18) spins as Tony Stewart (14) and Joey Logano (20) pass safely during the
Lenox Industrial Tools 301 race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway.
Johnson: Race winner sought payback for push
From Page 1C
track, allowing the No. 48 to
slip underneath for the victory. His five wins tie Denny
Hamlin for the series lead.
“I’m not good at doing
that stuff,” Johnson said.
“Usually I crash myself in
the process. So I tried it once
and moved him. The second
time I moved him out of the
way and got by him.”
Busch said his intention
was to pass Johnson cleanly
until he realized he could just
push him out of his path.
Johnson said he’d be surprised if Busch tried to purposely wreck him.
“If that’s his intentions,
that’d be the first time in
nine years racing with him
I’d experienced that,” Johnson said. “It definitely
changes the way I race with
him from that point on. I
hate that he felt I wasn’t going to wreck him, because
that was my goal, to wreck
him.”
“Strike that from the
comments, he didn’t really
mean that,” Johnson crew
chief Chad Knaus interjected.
Johnson didn’t believe
there would be further retaliation.
“He didn’t wreck me, so at
the end of the day I guess I
didn’t owe him,” Johnson
said.
The four-time defending
champion pulled away to win
his second straight race after
taking the checkered flag
last week on the road course
at Infineon Raceway.
It was a bump off the
track that Johnson was most
concerned about — his wife’s
Raye: Seahawks star Aaron Curry
will join Tank Tyler at banquet
From Page 1C
Raye.
“He’s a special person doing what he’s doing back
home, bringing everyone
down to Fayetteville,” Tyler
said. “I think people in North
Carolina feel like Fayetteville is kind of off the map.
People kind of bypass
Fayetteville when they think
of North Carolina, so it’s a
good thing we have people
like Jimmy Raye.”
Tyler, a defensive tackle
for the Carolina Panthers,
will join fellow E.E. Smith
graduate and Seattle Seahawks linebacker Aaron
Curry for the eighth installment of the event. The banquet generates funds to help
send area players to college
and pay the way for youngsters who can’t afford entry
fees into Fayetteville-Cumberland Parks and Recreation programs.
Camp is highlight
The highlight for Raye
remains the free, one-day
football camp for kids ages
6 to 17. Around 500 to 750
youth attend, getting an opportunity to learn from NFL
and college coaches and
players.
“We’re able to expose
them at the free football
camp to pro athletes who
came up in similar situations and backgrounds,”
Raye said. “They can see
that they’re mortal and human like them, and, if they
can dream it, they can also
achieve it.”
Raye and his deceased
boyhood friend, Ronald
“Chase” Chalmers, started
the event eights years ago as
a way to give back to the
youth of the community.
His ties to college and pro
football help him stock it
with big names, and the
Fayetteville area continues
to produce players that
reach the pros to add to the
guest list.
Changing reputation
Tyler said he wishes
Fayetteville would have had
a similar event to inspire
him when he was growing up
in the area.
He said many North Carolina people look down on
the city, and that negative
energy hurts youngsters
looking to make more of
themselves. But he believed
events like this and people
like Raye will help Fayetteville change its reputation.
“Fayetteville is kind of
like the down city, the underdog city as I call it,”
Tyler said. “I love my city,
and we’re going to build it
up and continue to make
Fayetteville shine. One day
it’s going to shine more than
any city in North Carolina.”
Then he paused and remembered
his
current
home.
“Well, not more than
Charlotte, since the Panthers are here,” he said.
Staff writer Paul Shugar can be
reached at [email protected]
or 486-3513.
baby bump.
Johnson dedicated the win
to his pregnant wife, Chandra, who is at home and due
with their first child around
the time of the July 10 race
at Chicagoland Speedway.
Johnson used Aric Almirola
as his standby driver.
“Hopefully you didn’t go
into labor with this victory,”
he said to his wife. “Wait for
me, I want to be a part of
this.”
Tony Stewart finished
second and Busch was third.
Jeff Gordon and Kevin Harvick rounded out the top
five.
“When you struggle as
bad as we have, it definitely
wasn’t going to hurt to go do
something like that,” Stewart said.
Late-race drama
The 318-mile race was almost absent of cautions until
the very end, with 201
straight laps of green flag
racing. Kasey Kahne drove
up front for most of the race
and led 110 laps until engine
problems knocked him out.
Pole sitter Juan Pablo Montoya also was in contention
until he was knocked out late
by a lapped car.
Jeff Burton was a serious
threat to win for the first
time in two years until he
made the decision not to pit
with 17 laps left. He was the
only lead lap driver not to pit
and it cost him when he spun
into Kyle Busch and took
them both out of contention.
Kurt Busch knew his car
wasn’t strong enough to win
and just hoped that late-race
tap was enough to hold off
5C
Johnson.
“We did what we could to
get the lead,” he said. “I was
just counting the laps and
was like, man, there’s not
enough laps. The thought
was, those 10 points for winning would look a lot better
stacked in our deck than in
his chip count.”
Johnson has stormed back
to championship form.
He has totally silenced the
doubts that he was in a slump
or appeared vulnerable during a five-race stretch from
April to May. He has two
straight wins for the second
time this season and four
straight top-six finishes.
“Yeah, I don’t think we
went anywhere,” Johnson
said. “It was easy to overreact because we had some
poor finishes and that was
due to overagression.”
Ryan Newman, Clint
Bowyer, Dale Earnhardt Jr.,
Joey Logano and A.J. Allmendinger completed the
top 10.
One week after short tempers and rugged driving on
the road course led to threats
of payback, it was a tame
race in New Hampshire. In
this one, Montoya said Gordon “messed him up” but
said he wasn’t angry with
him.
“I’m confused,” Johnson
said to laughter. “For a while
there, our sport was boring.
Then we wrecked the crap
out of them last week and
now all of a sudden we have
a problem because everybody is wrecking, and now
this week it wasn’t as exciting.”
DUBLIN — Picking up the
$4,000 winner’s check never
crossed Luke Roffers’ mind
as he sat in line with other
drivers, waiting to have his
racecar weighed.
Having led the first 31
laps of the 40-lap show, Roffers had come home second
to Greensboro’s Ray Tucker.
But Tucker’s car was 12
pounds below the post-race
minimum at the scales, and
when Roffers checked in
OK, he claimed his first Carolina Clash Super Late Model Series victory.
“We didn’t want to win
our first one this way,” said
Roffers, a Wisconsin native
who helps build Juan Pablo
Montoya’s NASCAR Sprint
Cup cars at Earnhardt
Ganassi Racing. “But it sure
is nice to collect the check.”
Roffers’ victory at Dublin
Motor Speedway was no
fluke. He nipped Whiteville’s
Dean Bowen for the pole position by 1/100th of a second,
then set the pace most of the
way. Five-time Clash titlist
Ricky Weeks took the lead
briefly on lap 23, but a caution flag negated the move
and put Roffers back out
front.
Weeks, who entered the
event just five points behind
Clash leader Dennis “Rambo” Franklin, retired two
laps later with a broken rear
end. But that didn’t reduce
the heat on Roffers, as Tucker picked up the pace and
eventually forced his way in
the top spot.
“The car just started
working,” said Tucker, a
winner of 10 Clash races in
his career. “I was waiting
and waiting. I knew there
wasn’t a reason to run real
hard for the first 20 laps. I
was just trying to save the
car for the second half.”
That’s also the time period when the hardening clay
began to wreak havoc on the
drivers’ tires. One by one,
many of the competitors suf-
fered flats, and per Clash
rules, each was given two
laps to bolt on fresh rubber
before action resumed.
That rash of extra circuits also cut into each car’s
fuel load. Carolina Clash
rule 21-C allows one pound
of “burnoff” per green-flag
lap, meaning Tucker’s car
needed to weigh at least
2,260 after the race. It
didn’t, and Tucker was irate
that Clash officials hadn’t allowed additional burnoff under the circumstances.
“We won the race, I just
feel like we got (expletive),’ ” Tucker said. “We
run 150 damn laps for a 40lap race. It looks like they
could have gave just a little
bit of weight.”
Nice surprise
Roffers,
meanwhile,
seemed a bit awestruck by
the turn of events, especially
given the fact he hadn’t
raced in a month.
“I just figured I finished
second,” he said. “We were
probably a second- or thirdplace car.”
The race had a big impact on the Clash standings.
Chris Ferguson, who was
three
points
behind
Franklin, opted to run a
$6,000-to-win Southern All
Star East show in Chester,
S.C. Ditto for fifth-place Jeff
Smith, the reigning Clash
champion.
Franklin, meanwhile, finished third at Dublin behind
Raeford’s Shawn Beasley.
Despite his troubles, Weeks
took over second in the
standings, but there’s a 63point gap between himself
and Franklin. Bowen, who
finished fourth on his home
track, is just two points behind Weeks.
“It was looking grim
there for a little while,” said
Franklin, who went to the
tail end of the field after an
early pit stop for tires. “But
I’ll take (third) and go on to
the next race,” tentatively
set for Aug. 7 at Rural Retreat, Va.
Motorsports editor Thomas Pope can
be reached at [email protected]
or 486-3520.
Cannon: Player tweaked hamstring and sat out SwampDogs’ last game
From Page 1C
outfield grass.
“There was no hesitation
at all because I was trying
to find a spot and just
trying to fit in,” Cannon
said. “I was pretty nervous,
I’m not going to lie, but it
turned out easier than I
thought.”
Or at least he’s made it
look easy.
In 22 games, Cannon
has locked down the
starting spot in right field,
committing just two errors
at the position while still
learning many of its
nuances.
Despite the position’s
novelty to him, Cannon
more than makes up for
his inexperience with his
array of physical tools,
including an arm that
suggests his surname is
rather fitting.
“He’s got a cannon,”
SwampDogs radio
broadcaster Adam Young
said. “No pun intended.”
Play anywhere
An outstanding athlete,
Cannon could play just
about anywhere on the
diamond, according to
Handelsman, but his play
in right field has shored up
an outfield that was a
question mark for the
SwampDogs at the
beginning of the season
“He’s certainly a
capable outfielder, and
we’re a little shorthanded
in the outfield, so it comes
in handy,” Handelsman
said. “That’s why he’s been
playing out there every
Staff photo by Emma Tannenbaum
SwampDogs outfielder Jay Cannon has earned a full
summer contract to play with Fayetteville.
night, not because he can’t
play short or he can’t play
third or one of those
spots.”
In addition to his nearly
seamless position
transition, Cannon made a
name for himself early on
at the plate, where he went
12 for his first 26 and
scored a run in five of his
first six games.
His play earned him a
full summer contract in
mid-June — the only
current SwampDog yet to
do so — and made for a
moment that Cannon won’t
soon forget.
“It was just awesome.
Words can’t explain it,”
Cannon said. “That was my
goal when I got here — to
stick around and to hang
out with the guys some
more and just to be around
the fans and this
environment for the whole
summer.”
Even with a contract in
hand, neither Cannon’s
effort nor his play has
slipped.
The Angier native leads
the SwampDogs in runs
and total bases, and his
league-leading .378 average
is best on the club by 57
points.
In his most recent
game, a 13-8 SwampDogs
victory against Columbia,
Cannon went 4-for-5 with
three doubles, four RBIs
and four runs scored, but
tweaked his hamstring as
he tried to leg out an
infield single.
The injury held Cannon
out of Saturday’s
doubleheader against
Florence, but his evening
at the plate Friday pushed
him to the top of the
league in hitting and
second in runs scored.
These stats have caught
the eye of a host of major
college programs, from the
University of Iowa to UNCWilmington, but Cannon
feels that he owes another
year to his coaches at
Brunswick C.C.
“The only junior college
that offered me (in high
school) was BCC, and that’s
been my main fuel to go
back there,” Cannon said.
“They took a chance on me
when no one else would.”
After his sophomore
season at Brunswick,
Cannon said he hopes finish
up his college career at a
four-year school and has
begun to survey a number
of options.
For right now, though,
Cannon is living in the
moment with the
SwampDogs.
“When I came in, I
knew I could compete and
I knew I could fit in with
the guys, but this has been
a dream come true,”
Cannon said. “I never
would have thought at this
stage of the season that I’d
be where I’m at.”