”It’s not really the way we want to do it, but we’ll take them any way we can get them.” is what Allentown’s Briggs Danner had to say after winning the USAX Sprint Car race at Lawrenceburg, Pa., on Friday night. On a smattering of occasions throughout the 2024 USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship season, Briggs Danner wound up in the unenvious position of having the proverbial rug pulled out from underneath him while leading late in a race. One of those particular instances came during July’s USAC Indiana Sprint Week round at Lawrenceburg Speedway where he was leading the field in the latter stages of the race before an engine issue forced him to the sidelines. Upon his return to the 3/8-mile dirt oval during Friday night’s inaugural Greg Staab Memorial, Danner just so happened to be on the opposite side of a similar ordeal. On the final lap, racelong leader Mitchel Moles’ bid for victory was snuffed just one turn away from the finish line when a caution was displayed for an incident in turn one involving Kyle Shipley and Kale Drake. Under the yellow, Moles’ car developed an unusual and unexpected malady. With his engine’s RPMs suddenly rising, Moles wore out his brakes just trying to keep his car whoa’d down under the yellow flag periodi. When Moles pulled off the racing surface, Danner took over control of the race, then fended off Robert Ballou for the final two circuits to gather a look-what-I-found victory in his Hogue Racing Enterprises/E. Schneider & Sons – Boulevard Truck Repair/DRC/Rider Chevy. Even with the lap 30 yellow flag, Danner felt he still had a chance to make a run at Moles. As it turned out, good fortune for himself and devastating heartbreak for Moles was negated that scenario before it could even be put to the test. “I feel really bad for Mitchel,” Danner admitted. “I knew he had something going on. I think his throttle was sticking. I don’t really want to win a race in that manner, but I still think we had a shot with two laps to go there. He was running through the bottom of one and two and I felt really good up top. I think we could’ve pushed the issue.” Despite gaining all three of his career USAC National Sprint Car feature wins in 2024 at Pennsylvania’s Grandview Speedway, as well as Indiana’s Bloomington and Lawrenceburg Speedways, Danner has also quite often been on the other side of the equation more times than he’d prefer with a boatload of near misses. *** According to Greg Engle it was a moment at Talladega that made NASCAR history, much to the chagrin of Cup Series teams, and reignited the debate over who gets to stay in the race. The Sunday October 6th event featured a staggering 66 lead changes, but the real showstopper came with five laps to go: the biggest crash in NASCAR history, involving 23 cars. The biggest of the Big Ones. The chaos began when Austin Cindric, leading the pack, slowed entering Turn 3. Chris Buescher bumped him from behind, triggering a chain reaction that wiped out a third of the field. Playoff contenders like Joey Logano, Tyler Reddick, and Cindric were left with a close-up view of the infield grass as their cars were towed away. With four laps remaining, NASCAR threw the red flag and brought the action to a standstill for just over 8 minutes while they cleared the debris and tried to untangle the mess. Chase Elliott and Chase Briscoe, both sporting damage that would make a demolition derby proud, pleaded with officials to stay in the race, hoping to keep their Playoff chances alive. Eventually, NASCAR allowed their cars to be towed back to the pits, where crews tried to patch them up. But one can only imagine this didn’t sit well with a couple of drivers who had seen their own hopes snuffed out by similar situations. Josh Berry and Ryan Blaney were notably unhappy, having faced their own early exits this season due to damaged cars that were deemed unworthy of a second chance. Blaney, who found himself parked after a crash at Watkins Glen left his steering column broken, fumed on that Sunday, “They didn’t give us a chance to fix it! They said we were done because I couldn’t drive it back to the pit box. But come on, if you’ve got four flats, you get towed back. I don’t know what’s going on.” Josh Berry surely had that same frustration after being towed at Kansas last week, his car barely drivable thanks to a shredded set of tires. For both drivers, it was a bitter pill to swallow, made worse by watching Briscoe and Elliott get a lifeline at Talladega. NASCAR official Brad Moran tried to clarify the situation on SiriusXM, explaining that while the rules haven’t changed, the interpretation can seem inconsistent. “The rule hasn’t changed, but it certainly can give a different view when it happens and it’s unfortunate,” Moran told SiriusXM. “But the 4, the 16, 21, and 84 were all involved in a wreck on the backstretch. The hit was hard enough on the 4 to lift the car off the ground, slam it down on the ground. And by the way, the IDR (incident) recorder did go off. So it was a significant incident that the 4 was in. If he couldn’t drive that car back, it was out due to DVP (Damaged Vehicle Policy). We don’t inspect it, obviously, on the site of the track. We haven’t got that ability. But the indicator is, you drive it back, you’re good. “If, however, he just spun and had four flat tires, he would have been towed to pit road under the flat tire recovery program. But it’s really clear on our recovery program and our DVP that if you’re involved in an incident, you have to be able to get your vehicle back to pit road. If it’s just sitting there (with) flat tires, you spun out — we’ll even give you (if you had) a light scuff — that would be one thing. That vehicle would have been towed in.” With the Talladega wreck bringing these issues back to the forefront, it’s safe to say Moran might need to sharpen his talking points for another round of driver frustrations this week. As for the rest of us, we’re left wondering if there’s a rulebook somewhere that even NASCAR understands. Meanwhile, Elliott was scored 29th Sunday, Briscoe 30th. Elliott leaves Talladega just 13 points above the cutline, Briscoe at the bottom of the pile minus 32. JR Motorsports announced a renewal of their multi-faceted partnership with Bass Pro Shops, the leading national retailer of outdoor gear and apparel. With today’s renewal, Bass Pro Shops will continue to support the trio of Carson Kvapil, NASCAR Hall of Famer Dale Earnhardt Jr., and Wyatt Miller as they each compete across multiple racing series through the partnership with the outdoor and conservation company founded by conservationist Johnny Morris. *** Bass Pro Shops has over 170 retail locations throughout the United States and Canada and is the trusted source for quality fishing, hunting, boating and outdoor sporting goods. The brand has visited Victory Lane 12 times with JRM over the last four years, including a win in 2020 in the first race of its partnership, and a stretch of eight victories in 2022 that produced a record-tying four consecutive NXS wins with the No. 9 team and a berth in the Championship 4. NASCAR Studios and Words + Pictures, the team behind the critically acclaimed Netflix docuseries FULL SPEED, today announced the formation of FULL SPEED ENTERTAINMENT, a production partnership that will develop and produce a wide swath of premium racing content, ranging from documentaries, series and special events to studio shows, podcasts, and more. Among the venture’s projects will be the much-anticipated second season of FULL SPEED, which will premiere on Netflix in 2025. “I couldn’t be more excited to be expanding our partnership with NASCAR with Full Speed Entertainment,” said Connor Schell, the CEO and founder of Words + Pictures. “The first season of Full Speed was a really rewarding project for our company, and it was a thrill to work side-by-side with NASCAR Studios every step of the way. The opportunity to bring audiences more great racing content and collaborate with NASCAR opens a wealth of possibilities we can’t wait to get working on.” The partnership will allow Words + Pictures to significantly expand their development focus in the racing space and work closely with NASCAR Studios on content all across the storytelling spectrum. About Words + Pictures Words + Pictures was founded in 2021 by Schell and Peter Chernin, and is backed by Chernin’s The North Road Company. In addition to Full Speed, W+P’s critically acclaimed documentaries and docuseries include the Emmy award-winning Super League: The War for Football (Apple), Full Court Press (ESPN), Giannis: The Marvelous Journey (Prime Video), and Super/Man: The Christopher Reeve Story (HBO/CNN Films). About NASCAR Studios NASCAR Studios is the dedicated hub for developing world-class, on-demand content and dynamic storytelling executions on behalf of America’s No. 1 form of motorsports, including driver-focused social content, original documentaries, series, short films and features, as well as branded content, studio shows and podcasts. Credited projects include the 2024 Netflix docuseries NASCAR: Full Speed, USA Network’s Race for The Championship, the Sports-Emmy-Award-Winning Netflix documentary RACE: Bubba Wallace, and more. Ernie Saxton is an auto racing contributor for MediaNews Group. He co-founded the Eastern Motorsports Press Association, served as public relations director for Grandview Speedway for 47 years, and is in multiple halls of fame for his promotion and journalism related to the sport. He has announced races at more than 100 tracks, and he is the only person to have announced a race at Madison Square Garden. Email him at [email protected].