By BRANT JAMES, Times Staff Writer
Published April 12, 2005
Aric Almirola and his Late Models race team bounce from one small Southern town to another. Little knowledge of the tracks. No sympathy from the regulars. Lots of pressure to win as a well-funded facet of the Joe Gibbs Racing driver development program.
You learn to love the thrash, and the 20-year-old Tampa native does dearly. More so on nights like Saturday, when he won for the first time this season in a 150-lap feature at Motor Mile Speedway in Radford, Va. Nights like that could help him realize his dream of eventually driving one of Gibbs' Nextel Cup cars.
"It definitely advances it a whole lot," Almirola said. "The whole basis of this year was to be able to learn to adapt to new tracks and new people and new race leagues. I think me and my team together are proving we're capable of that, week in and week out."
Almirola started sixth and had worked his way to third by Lap 90 of the NASCAR Weekly Series Stocks race, but he was sent to the end of the lead lap (15th) just when he was flagged for rough driving after bumping Eric Sartin making a pass for second. Almirola crept to the front again when a caution flew with less than 15 laps left, and he passed Philip Morris , the track points leader, for the lead with six laps remaining.
After winning twice and producing 15 top 10s last season racing at the quarter-mile Ace Speedway in Altamahaw, N.C., Almirola was scheduled to race larger Late Model events at various tracks throughout the Southeast.
"The biggest challenge of it is week in and week out we change our whole race car and mental attitude going from track to track, whereas when you race one track, you can bring your car back from racing that week and say, "Okay, this is what we need to make better to go back'," Almirola said.
"Well, now that we're traveling from track to track, we take our notes after we get done racing and we store them away in a folder and we don't use them until we go back to that track. Basically, every time we go back to a track we're guessing at a setup and once we get there we have to thrash to get going as fast as the guys who run there every week. That's the biggest challenge, to go into somebody else's race track where they race three, four, five weeks in a row and we just show up there and in one day we're going to run with them."
LEGGE UP: The ascendance of Danica Patrick , Sarah Fisher and Erin Crocker to jobs with high-profile, well-funded race teams has spotlighted this season as one of great opportunity for females. Patrick, driving with the Indy Racing League's Rahal Letterman team, and Fisher and Crocker, competing on NASCAR developmental teams at Richard Childress Racing and Evernham Motorsports, respectively, were beaten to Victory Lane by someone who might have proved that female talent is better than ever.
Katherine Legge 's victory at Long Beach on Sunday in the developmental Atlantic Championship was the first by a woman in a major North American open wheel race. The win is believed to be the first by a woman in a major open wheel event since South African Desire Wilson won at Brand Hatch in the F1 Aurora Series in 1980.
"It's not sunk in yet that I've made history," Legge said. "But hopefully, it will encourage more young girls to get into the sport."
Legge, 24, a rookie from Northampton, England, started seventh but capitalized on a late technical problem by leader Rocky Moran Jr . She held off teammate Antoine Bissette to win by .507 seconds.
SPARK PLUGS: Nextel Cup veteran Sterling Marlin told the Charlotte Observer he is "99.9 percent certain" he will not be re-signed by Chip Ganassi Racing with Felix Sabates for 2006. The 47-year-old has four wins since Ganassi purchased a majority interest in the team in 2000, and finished third in points in 2001. He has not won since 2002.
