PENSACOLA, Fla. – Pro late model young gun Christopher Tullis may have been knocked down during Thursday’s opening practice session for the Allen Turner Hyundai Snowflake 100, but he surely isn’t backing out of the ring at Five Flags Speedway.
Tullis crashed his No. 24 entry during the early minutes of the first session, taking a hard shunt into the second-turn wall that destroyed his primary car for Saturday night’s 100-lap race at the Florida half-mile.
Most drivers would have packed up and headed home at that point, but Tullis was determined to stick things out. He called a racing friend and rival to see about using a backup car for the remainder of the weekend, and nearly as fast as his hopes of racing had gone away, they were back with renewed focus.
“It’s not the situation you want to be in here during Derby week, but we’re not going anywhere. We’ve got a plan and we’ll have another car,” Tullis told SPEED SPORT late Thursday evening. “Dylan Fetcho is a friend of mine and we raced a lot together in quarter midgets growing up. He’s got a 2016 Hamke that’s almost identical to mine, and he told me if we wanted it, it was ours to use.
“Any other weekend, I would have taken my stuff right on out of here and watched the race online from my couch … but this is the Derby,” noted Tullis. “If you can find another car, you have to be here.”
Sure enough, Friday morning, a black No. 89 car with Fetcho’s name above the door was rolling out of Tullis’ hauler. He noted that he’s already done the setup work on the new car and the frame is nearly identical to his own car as well.
“Sometimes it’s nice to have good friends in this deal, and I appreciate Dylan letting us do this,” Tullis said. “The only thing I’m bummed out about is that we have to use another car, because ours was really fast before it got torn up.”
– Unlike their pro late model counterparts, the super late models completed three rounds of practice on Thursday with no incidents. The only delays came for a couple of funerals taking place off the backstretch of the half-mile oval during the day.
Ty Majeski paced opening practice in the morning, while Jesse Dutilly and Jeff Choquette topped the afternoon rounds. Choquette’s lap of 16.525 seconds was the best single lap turned all day.
– Reigning NASCAR K&N Pro Series West champion Derek Thorn is running double duty this weekend at Five Flags Speedway, competing in both the Snowflake 100 and the Snowball Derby.
However, Thorn’s strategic focus when talking to SPEED SPORT on Thursday was on the Derby, a race he’s seeking to win for the first time.
Thorn noted that he feels Bubba Pollard is the favorite to capture the victory on Sunday and that it won’t be easy to stop him.
“You have to be perfect if you’re going to beat Bubba here,” Thorn noted. “He almost never makes a mistake himself and those cars … they’re always really quick. The pro late model he has here is stupid fast. He’s not going to make it easy on us, but we’ll do all we can to go out and take it from him.”
– With a threat of rain looming over Saturday’s on-track activities, race director Dan Spence noted during Friday morning’s drivers meeting that Five Flags Speedway and Snowball Derby officials will do everything in their power to get the racing portion of the program in as scheduled.
“That might come at the expense of late model practice, we don’t know yet,” said Spence. “All we do know is that sometime between now and Sunday morning, we’re going to get wet. Be prepared for it.”
