Steve Francis preparing for Lucas Oil visit to ‘scary fast’ Tazewell Speedway

Steve Francis

Steve Francis

Upon being asked to play a word association game, Steve Francis replied quickly with the words “scary fast” when the word put forward was ‘Tazewell’.

This Friday night, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series will pay a visit to the super high banked Tazewell Speedway. Francis will enter that race in fourth place of the series standings behind his Clint Bowyer Racing teammate Don O’Neal, east Tennessee hero Jimmy Owens and multiple time LOLMDS champion Earl Pearson, Jr. But Francis knows anything can happen when racing on Gary Hall’s super fast track.

“As a car owner, its not a place you would look forward to going to because if anything happens, the place is so quick and so fast you can’t get out of it,” the 46 year old driver admitted.

There are few, if any, tracks around the country that can compare to the ‘Bad Fast Taz’. Francis says that presents unique challenges for drivers who only get to see the place once or twice a year. But he also points out that the racing there can be quite good when the track is right.

“Tazewell is its own race track,” Francis declared in a telephone interview. “There’s nothing you can compare it to. There’s none like it. I like it when they get the bottom wet and then the bottom comes in during the feature so you qualify right around the top wall but then you race top and bottom in the feature. That’s what the place is like when it’s at its best, but I know it’s hard to get it that way all the time.”

Francis has never won a feature race at Tazewell in seven or eight chances there. And the veteran driver realizes that the uniqueness of this particular track lends itself to upsets by local drivers who have more experience negotiating the high banks.

“It would be one of the top-3 or 4 tracks on the schedule where that can happen,” Francis said of the possibility of Lucas Oil regulars being unseated by drivers from outside the tour. “But you have to almost consider Bloomquist and Owens as, not necessarily locals, but they both have raced a tremendous amount up there. Billy Ogle has good equipment and runs real well up there. There are six or seven of those guys from that area that run really well.”

The Clint Bowyer owned No. 15 driven by Steve Francis.

The Clint Bowyer owned No. 15 driven by Steve Francis.

So far in 2014, Francis and his team have posted positive results. An early season Lucas Oil win at Golden Isles Speedway in south Georgia was followed up by an NDRL victory in Pittsburgh, Penn. However, the driver of car No. 15 feels as if his early season results could have been even better with just a few breaks along the way.

“It’s been a good season so far,” he said. “Weather seems like it kills us. We’ll get on a good roll and the weather will mess us up. But the last couple of weeks we’ve had everything that can go wrong to go wrong. We got real close to Don in points and then we had two bad nights in a row at LaSalle and Wheatland and kind of fell back off of him. We’re looking for our luck to kick in, I guess you would say. We’ve ran good, but we just haven’t had a lot of times where everything fell exactly right for us.”

Francis and his team face a unique distinction in that the Barry Wright Race Cars they field are owned by a very high-profile personality. And the ‘Kentucky Colonel’ sees having NASCAR star Clint Bowyer for a boss as an advantage.

“You feel the pressure to perform,” he declared. “Clint’s a racer and he’s been through the ups and downs many times. The good thing is that Clint doesn’t put the extra pressure on us, we put it on ourselves. He’s an excellent car owner to have.”

And because of those advantages at CBR, Francis believes he and teammate O’Neal are just hitting their strides.

“I think we are. O’Neal has found a comfortable package that works for him and he’s stuck with that. We’ve been bouncing around a little more trying to find something a little bit better. But Don’s won three and I’ve won two, and it’s only May.”

 

 

 

 

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