Tim Lynch lights ‘em up prior to his Saturday-night qualifying attempt, but with the temperature dropping and the track losing bite he was unable to improve on his pole position-winning pass from earlier in the day.
 Bryan Markiewicz said his team enjoyed “a beautiful weekend” after making a 4.48 test pass with his ’68 Camaro straight off the trailer on Friday night, then running low-.50s to qualify 11th before going out in the semis against eventual race winner Richard Sexton. |
Obviously, the “Lynch Mob” had a rooting interest in the second semi, too, as Markiewicz could gift wrap the championship for them, but the race was over at the start as Sexton strapped a sizable .032 holeshot on his Florida-based opponent, then put together a nice 4.47/164.65 combination against a troubled 4.63/159.63 in the right lane.
“We just tried to put a little too much to it. We tried to bump it up for him, but I think we should’ve just left it alone,” Markiewicz conceded. “We left with a 1.12 (second) 60-foot (time) when we’ve been going 1.10, 1.09 all weekend. It probably could’ve used a new set of tires, too. These had 10 passes on them and there was a lot of tire shake. Right off the bat it shook all the way through low gear.”
That left only the final round to determine the 2008 ORSCA Outlaw 10.5 champion. Again, Lynch and his gang took up positions in the right-lane grandstands and again Sexton used his lane choice to line up in the left side.
At the first flash of green Moyer left with a .031 light to Sexton’s .038, marking the only time he’d been “treed” all day. No matter, by half-track—right in front of Lynch’s viewpoint—Sexton took over the lead, both on the track and in the points chase. He finished with another 4.47 at 164.65 to beat down the 4.52 at 166.42 by Moyer, who revealed he’d made an aggressive tuning change for the final. “I had him all the way to second gear, but then it didn’t run good and he got by me,” he said. “But I was reeling him back in when I ran out of race track.”
Despite the bracket-like consistency, Sexton claimed his team had left his car’s set-up alone all day; then added he just tried to do the same. “The last two rounds Gil (Mobley) just said, ‘They’ve gotta’ beat you, so just do everything the same and make them beat you,’ so that’s what I did and it all worked out for us.”
Lynch admitted it was tough to sit and watch Sexton advance and snatch away the championship at the very last moment of the season, but still, he offered high praise for the effort. “Two points might as well be 200 points,” Lynch said. “My hat’s off to Richard and the whole Mobley team because they deserved it this weekend. They had the better car and the better team out here. Yeah, I would’ve liked to win if he (Sexton) had went out, but I still wouldn’t have felt really good because I just don’t think we deserved it this weekend.”
Sexton said he won an Outlaw 10.5 track championship in 2003, his first year with Mobley, at 75 & 80 Dragway (since closed) in Monrovia, MD, but the ORSCA accomplishment marked his career-first series championship and represented a “big accomplishment” to him and his team.
“The blue car kind of snuck in there at the end. Everybody was worried about Chuckie (Ulsch) and Lynch the whole time and nobody really thought about Richard,” Mobley pointed out. “We knew it was a slim chance coming in, but we said if Chuckie goes out second round and Timmy (Lynch) goes out with him, then Richard would have a chance if he goes all the way to the end—and that’s exactly what happened—unbelievable. We ended up at 1 and 3 overall, so we’re very happy, very, very happy.”
It’s all over. Richard Sexton (far lane) drops the laundry on his championship-winning ORSCA season as he beats Todd Moyer in the Outlaw 10.5 final round.