Tropicana 400: Sharon the ride

Blaney running NASCAR but puts money where his heart is

Sunday, July 14, 2002

By Chris Dolack, Special to the Post-Gazette

JOLIET, Ill. -- Dave Blaney finally is catching his breath.

Since the end of the 2001 NASCAR Winston Cup season, Blaney has not only switched teams and cars, but he also was the main investor in a group that purchased Sharon Speedway in his native Hartford, Ohio, near Youngstown.

Midway through the 2002 season, Blaney is settling in at Jasper Motorsports and has his Ford Taurus 19th in points. He qualified seventh for today's Tropicana 400 at Chicagoland Speedway with a run of 181.568 mph. He will move up after outside pole-sitter Kurt Busch blew an engine in each of the two practice sessions yesterday, forcing him to start in the back of the field. Rookie Ryan Newman won the pole on the 1.5-mile oval Friday with a 183.051-mph run.

"Changing teams this winter was the hardest part, a lot harder than changing brands, I think," said Blaney, 39, the 1995 World of Outlaws champion who drove Pontiacs and Dodges for Bill Davis Racing from 1999 through last season. "I'm just learning all these new guys and a new crew chief [Ryan Pemberton]. We're getting better and better. The past month or so has been really good. As long as we're seeing improvement, we're happy."

Since he finished ninth at California Speedway in April, Blaney has three top-15 finishes and has led four of the past eight races. He was in the top-10 for 105 of the 160 laps in the Pepsi 400 at Daytona International Speedway last week.

But high-speed NASCAR racing on tracks across the country is a long way from Sharon Speedway, where he started driving sprint cars with his brother, Dale, in 1981.

"Buying Sharon Speedway is something our family has considered for a long time, and I'm as excited about what we have planned as anything I've been involved with in racing," he said. "My parents and brother and his wife have been doing all the work so I've got to give them the credit. They're doing a great job up there."

His responsibilities to his NASCAR team keep him away from Sharon most of the racing season, but he does occasionally return.

"I've been there a couple of times," he said. "I'll get to the Outlaws race July 31 and then Tony Stewart and I are going to race Aug. 15. Those two are our biggest nights left. The crowd support has been great so far, and the car counts have been good.

"NASCAR doesn't reach this area with a major race, so we hope to bring in several of the guys I race with to help make a few of the weekends a little bigger for the fans. Most of them started on tracks just like Sharon."

One driver who has seen a lot of Sharon Speedway this season is sprint car driver Ed Lynch Jr., who is chasing the all-time mark at Lernerville Speedway. Going into last night, Lynch was the only driver to win a weekly sprint car race this season at Sharon, a three-eighth-mile dirt track. Danny Lasoski won an Outlaws race there in May.

"No one's been able to beat [Lynch]," Blaney said. "Sometimes I think there's almost too much room to race. There's no chance of getting trapped in the back. There's always a place to run. If all the guys are on the bottom, he goes to the top and beats them. It's a racy track so far, and there's been lots of three-wide racing, except the same guy seems to be getting to the front."

Even though Blaney doesn't return as often as he might like, he is aware of his strong fan base in Western Pennsylvania.

"There's so many people that enjoy the racing, and I know they're all pulling for me every week," he said. "It's awful fun to go back to talk with them."

No matter how much success he has in Winston Cup, Blaney will be known for his success in sprint cars. And that doesn't bother him at all.

"I think everybody respects that form of racing," he said. "It's flattering to me. In my eyes, I'll always be a sprint car guy who's just racing NASCAR."