I’m sorry that I missed posting about this until now, but thank God for broadcast media (sometimes, lol). Tonight’s feature on Donny Lia during Dover’s NCTS pre-show reminded me what a great finish last weekend’s truck race was; and, the up-close & personal interview with Lia, etc. allowed all of us to see him as a person, rather than “just another rookie/first-time NCTS winner”. Now, even I have to admit, sigh … my eyes actually got all misty at the end of that feature, watching his Victory Lane celebrations all over again — only this time, actually understanding why that win was such an emotional one for him. Not merely as a part-time rookie driver no one expected to even be up front at the end, let alone with a checker in his hand. But, as a guy from New York, with no prior racin’ experience in any sort of ‘racin’ family’ … the whole deal. Amazing story, really, in this modern era of “how to get into NASCAR racin’”, and a guy I’m going to particularly enjoy watching now. [If I can later dig up that vid feature for you, I'll post it right here & toss up a short link to it in a new post so you don't have to dig through other pages to find it, ok? Alas ... thus far, we've only found the race finish vid (which is really cool anyway, so you've gotta' see it if you missed that race, grin, but I'll keep lookin' as tonight's race vids keep streamin' in!]
Here’s the bottom-line, for me: Any rookie NCTS driver unafraid of initiating some Bodine-type contact with Bodine in order to put one last position between himself and the win, and gutsy enough to push Starr outa’ the way to take over first — let alone goin’ into that final lap, turn 3-4, three-wide with these veterans? Especially at Mansfield? Drivin’ a Chevy?? grin … yeah, that’s someone I wanna’ watch, because he’s clearly a natural-born NASCAR driver … especially considering how he carved out his own place in a damned tough business.
Here are the final laps of last weekend’s race, then, so you can see for yourself what it took for Lia to take this win … to earn it the hard way — the ol’ NASCAR way. Truly, I think this sort of hard-assed racin’ is what some of us miss most about Cup’s “newer old days”. I mean, really — when’s the last time we saw 2-3 final laps in this (present COT-pos) Cup racin’ era wherein the battle came down to three equally viable contenders, fightin’ hard & rubbin’ all over the place in order to take that checker?
Too long for me.
Anyway … enjoy last week’s NCTS finish, especially if you missed it — it was classic. (And, of course, we’ll have more for you on tonight’s race, well, grin … probably tomorrow! Until then, I’m not even gonna’ tell you who won … maybe I’ll just mention that there was some “speed” [nudge-nudge] involved …)
Oh! And I’d better not forget, grin — congratulations, Lia, and welcome aboard the ‘rubbin’ is racin’ ship!!!
Update: here’s a little extra text for you, too, just in case we have trouble finding that feature clip — or, just in general, grin, as the rest of the story (if you make the jump) gives a great background shot of Lia’s progression to NCTS:
“It was just good short-track racing,” [David Starr, who was knocked out of first place by Lia on the last lap] said. “… He had the preferred line. It was a great race.… That’s just good short-track action. You just never know what’s going to happen until the end.”
As Lia thinks about it, he admits he didn’t have a particular plan or strategy when he headed into the final turns. He simply let instinct take over.”It was like just a throwback for me to racing my modifieds on a short track,” he says. “Instinct kind of takes over, and everything I learned over the years in the modifieds and racing on a short tracks. You just kind of do what comes natural and what I’ve learned over the years, [to] try to apply it as much as I can in the truck because the trucks are completely different from the modifieds, and it takes a lot for me to convert everything over to make what I know work in the truck, getting myself comfortable and getting to the point where I know what I need in the truck to be comfortable. ”
He says that’s been the biggest obstacle, learning to drive a truck the way that feels so natural in other series.
He says that he still has a ways to go, but points to the strong team behind both him and teammate Andy Lally.
Mostly, though, he’s just still trying to wrap his mind around the fact that he has won a series race.
“It’s an unbelievable feeling,” he said. “I probably can’t do a good job of describing it. It just means a lot to me. It means a lot to my race team. It’s a really big deal. So big for us, I don’t know if you could even put it in to words. Right now it’s kind of surreal, and I’m still trying to get a grasp on it all. I’m in a little bit of disbelief, I guess.” Full Story
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