ASA Late Models Update From Nashville

By John Barker

Derek Thorn played all the right music winning the ASA Late Model Challenge Series Music City Spring Clash 200 at Music City (TN) Motortplex in Nashville, TN on Saturday night March 31, 2007. The race was presented by GM Performance Parts.

New rookie points leader, Thorn took the lead from Charlie Menard on lap 139 and the Lakeport, California freshman went on to win his first career ASALMS Challenge Division feature. Fourteen of 30 cars finished on the lead lap.

Chris Fontaine of Lakeland, FL couldn’t find the right notes finishing 24th in the 30 car starting field after tire adjustment problems.

“Yeah, I was still getting used to the (radial) tires,” said Fontaine. Someone told us what pressures to use and it was totally wrong. We didn’t figure it out until after qualifying and during the race the car wasn’t set up right for the pressures.”

The last of 11 cautions flew during circuit lap 190 when Fontaine, who was in an earlier incident on lap 47 was trying to hold his own. He slapped the turn one wall and came to rest in the middle of the back stretch finishing him for the evening.

”I returned to the track earlier to try and finish additional laps,” Fontaine said. I was following the sixth place driver and he went real high and I pushed up a little bit and got into the marbles and tagged the wall.

Earlier in the afternoon in ARP Bodies/Aluminum Racing Products qualifying Ill. sophomore, Nick Neville ripped off the fastest lap as the 19-year-old in his Ben E. Neville Roll Off and Trucking Services Chevrolet Monte Carlo turned a lap measured at 19.207 seconds or 111.709 mph.

Sean Murphy drove the no. 32 ASI LIMITED, Akzo Nobel, Spectrum Metal Finishing, Aluminum Shapes Late Model to a respectable 23rd place start and 22nd place finish for the Music City Spring Clash 200 at Music City Motorplex in Nashville, Tenn. It was Murphy’s first-ever race at the track. He completed 118 laps of the 200 lap event due to an incident out of Murphy’s control that left the racecar heavily damaged.
The next event will mark the Challenge series first ever appearance on the historic high-banks of the .500 mile Toledo (OH) Speedway in Toledo, Ohio on Friday and Saturday April 13-14 in the running of the Glass Breaker 200.

Editors Note: Short Track America begins it broadcast coverage of the ASA Late Model Series on April 16. The show “ASA Fast Lane”, sponsored by KARNAC.com and Evergreen Development & Construction, will air each Monday night at 7:30 featuring interviews and special reports from our ASA reporters and writers including John Barker, Mark Brewer and Terry Wall and others around the country working with Short Track America on this project.