A look at the 2006 point race week by week
A Record Breaking Night
May 6 – A rubber-down track saw Brown and Alley finish 11th and 13th respectively, in the Season Opener on April 22. The April WoO show was a wash, and with the split into two traveling organizations, plenty of outsiders were around. The Knoxville record-books would be rewritten on May 6. Eighteen travelers were in the house, and Aussie Brooke Tatnell destroyed Terry McCarl’s 9 month old one-lap record by a half a second, stopping the clocks at 14.409 seconds. Twenty-six drivers were under the old standard including Alley (14.634) and Brown (14.808). Brown recalls, “I remember going out early with a 14.8 and thinking, we’re really hauling the mail tonight! And then I realized we were 17th quick!”
With Alley’s good time, his heat invert was a bit too much to transfer, relegating him to the B, and ultimately, a 16th place finish. “It was one of those weeks that really killed us early,” says Alley, “It’s not that we weren’t fast, we just had to start towards the back in the races, and it was like a World of Outlaw show on a regular point night!”
A strong run by Brown saw him pass Shane Stewart late to finish where he started, third. Brown adds, “It was a good point night for us. Anytime you can run third when Lasoski, (Craig) Dollansky and Shane Stewart are there, it’s a good night.”
Brown’s lead: 125
Black Flags, Spin Outs and Victory Lane
May 13 – With a heavy contingent of IRA cars in attendance, both drivers timed in the top five. However, Alley’s night took a twist after he drew the wrath of flagman Doug Clark. “It seemed like it was one of those nights where Clark just wanted to let everyone know that he was still the boss. I didn’t jump, but I was out of line for sure. I’ve seen a lot worse starts since then. He sends me to the back behind a guy whose motor wouldn’t start, and that was it.” After another black flag, to the pits he went.
Alley saved himself by winning the B and passing fifteen cars in the A to finish sixth. Brown was consistent all night long, and drove from row five to finish third. “That was a night we could have won, but that’s hindsight. That’s what could make the difference in the points,” Alley says.
May 20 – Brown streaked to a flag to flag win, his first of the season. Alley was running third when he spun, collecting Lynton Jeffrey.
Brown’s win was briefly in doubt when Wayne Johnson pulled a brief slider for the lead after the restart for the Alley spin, but Brown shot by back him down the backstretch and never looked back.
May 27 – Alley repeated Brown’s feat of a week prior leading the duration of the feature event, and providing his owners with their first trip to the front stretch. “That was huge. It was like the first win ‘on my own’. It was cool to be the person that got Ed his first 410 win at Knoxville. It showed that I don’t have to be in family stuff to win races.” The team was coming together and confidence was building.
Brown would finish fourth, and with three strong weeks, was seemingly in the driver’s seat on the young season. Brown says, “Our main goal was to be consistent, consistent, consistent. A lot of nights we may have had a fifth place car, but we would finish third.”
Both drivers were smooth in June weekly action, failing to finish outside of the top five.
Brown’s lead: 325
The WoO Visit
June 23 - The point structure at Knoxville has not changed much since the first Des Moines River gumbo was put on the famous half-mile. To entice attendance of WoO shows, all Knoxville regulars are given 100 points for competing. That is, unless they earn more. In those cases, they keep those extra points. The rule helped out Alley, and when he registered tenth quick and transferred through his heat, he started on the front row of the dash. He dominated, much to the approval of the Knoxville masses. A steady main event saw him lead the first nine laps, but fade to fourth. He gained valuable points on Brown, who finished a respectable 12th after running the B. Brown’s lead was cut to 255. “There was a point in that race where I said, ‘We can win this’! It just shows that if you slip a bit, the Outlaws will blow by you like you’re tied to a fence post! I was thinkin’ too much,” Alley recalls.
July 1 – Alley parlayed the confidence he showed against the travelers by making a late race pass of Jeffrey to garner his second win of the season. “It showed that our first win wasn’t luck. We passed some cars and showed that we were still getting faster,” he said.
Brown’s qualifying struggles (27th quick) would set him back, but he would bounce back well, coming out of the invert to transfer in his heat and then charging from 18th to 3rd in the main. “We’d just got a motor back from our engine builder, and a couple of the linkages were loose. With the throttle down, it would only run half-throttle. We didn’t figure it out until after qualifying. Nights like that are what championship teams are made of…we didn’t give up.”
Brown’s lead: 180
Twin Features
July 8 - Twin Features night has long been a “make or break” night for season championships. In Brown’s words, “That week you don’t get much sleep.” If you don’t make the show, you might as well hang it up. With two features paying full points, the second one is inverted according to the finish of the first. Double the work for the crews, double the tires, etc. await.
After Brown won the first feature with Alley behind him, both would start in rows eight and nine. Alley stormed back for another runner-up finish, held off by Brent Antill, while Brown would surge to fifth. Brown remembers, “Just to pass that many cars at Knoxville is hard…to tell me to start the night we would finish with two top fives, I would have been happy.”
“We got a good start and were really fast. We about got it done, but I was a little too cautious there,” says Alley.
Brown’s lead: 150
The Blown Tire
July 15 – Consistency had been the key for both all season, but it was about to take a cruel twist for Brown. With Skip Jackson leading Alley, Brown was running fifth and coming for the checkers when his right rear tire blew, relegating him to 17th. Brown says, “It was rubber-down before the feature, and we got into the top five pretty quick. Then we broke a rocker arm, so we were running on six cylinders. We were just kind of limping around in line and coming for the white flag…we were just hoping to finish. We took a major, major hit in our points. It was a turning point, everything was going so good, we said ‘maybe we aren’t going to win this deal’. When you’re coasting along and something like that happens, it takes the wind out of your sails.”
Alley maintained second and took the points lead.
Alley’s lead: 20
Summer Classic
July 22 - The Summer Classic brings a rare high dollar event for the locals. Fifty-one competitors, including the IRA contingent raced in the first year it has been a one-night stand. After registering quick time and with a rare draw for starting position, Brown drew a 15 and stormed to the front. He staged a classic duel with Jeffrey, who, after Brian got by briefly in heavy traffic with two to go, won his first career feature event. “The week before I had pulled the guys together and said, let’s forget about this point thing and try to race every race we’re in, and the points will take care of themselves. To start 15th and have a run like that was great!”
Alley who drew a 14 would come home seventh. Brown’s finish gave him the lead again in the see-saw standings.
Brown’s lead: 95
Up in Smoke!
August 5 - After Brown and Alley finished 6th and 7th, respectively on July 29, it was time for the prelude to the Knoxville Nationals. Both would do rare double-duty as the finale of the 360 Nationals would also be run. Both were qualified for the “Big Cahuna” in the 360s. Alley was trying for an unprecedented three-peat in the event, this time behind the wheel of Mark Burch’s #1m. He would have to work for it, starting inside row five. Brown had put himself outside of row four.
Brown recalls, “Entering the night, it was the best situation I’ve probably ever been in, motor-wise, with a good fresh one and one we had just bought from Danny (Lasoski).” His problems began with 410 time trials. A blown engine sent the team outside of the track for another without a qualifying time. With so many cars in the pits, it was necessary to unload the trailers, adding more stress to the situation. Enter 360 driver, John Kearney, who was taking the night off in the suites. “John jumped up as soon as he saw we blew our motor. We didn’t have the tools to change motors, so John jumped in Tony Bokhoven’s golf kart and headed to the North Campground where his trailer and tools were and brought them back for us. If it wasn’t for him, we probably wouldn’t have gotten that motor changed. We put our motor in that were going to use for the Nationals and we didn’t transfer through our heat. We were probably going to transfer through the B from the back, but lost a camshaft in that one. It was just heartbreaking.”
Enter Brown’s cousin, Jon Corbin. A regular in the 360 class, the likeable youth is the grandson of Midwest sprint legend, Tom Corbin. A rare night allowing double-duty saw Corbin preparing for his first 410 Nationals. As luck would have it, he had qualified for the show, and orders were to turn over the wheel to cousin, Brian.
Knoxville rules state that if a qualified car has a substitute driver, that driver will get points afforded him. If Brown were an alternate out of the B, no such points would be awarded. Drivers have taken advantage of this rule for decades, but conspiracy theorists came out of the woodwork. Brown struggled to a 16th place finish, far behind Alley, whose third place run gave him the points lead for the second time.
When the dust settled on the 360 Nationals event, Brown rebounded for a solid podium run in third after a long night, while Alley mustered seventh. Says Brown, “There were times that night when I asked if I was in the right car. What a chaotic mess!”
Alley’s lead: 40
The Nationals
August 9-12 - Though the Nationals carry no track points, both Alley and Brown came in with high expectations. In 2005, Alley came out of qualifying night in the top two in points. A rubber-down day surface when the A Scramble came around, foiled his shot at the front row, but he was in and finished 17th.
Despite coming out 40th in the qualifying order, Alley nailed down quick time on his qualifying night this time. A lightning fast track saw him finish eighth in his heat, sending him to the B, which he won. A nice charge to 13th saw Alley lock himself in Saturday’s Championship for the second year in a row. He would finish 20th, which disappointed him. “I had a lot higher expectations. We would have liked to run on Friday, then we would have found the problem (injection) we had on Saturday. It was a disadvantage for us not to run Friday, and if the points were a little different for us, we could have.” Alley shows his desire to stand atop the sport’s biggest stage. “It changed my attitude on the whole season, and really bummed me out.”
Brown was searching for his first Nationals A main appearance. His qualifying night started well, as he timed in 10th after coming out 63rd in the order. A nice charge from 9th to 5th was great, but it sent him straight to the B. He was able to transfer through the B, and finished 16th in the A. His point total was two tallies behind Sammy Swindell, who was the last to lock himself in to the “Biggie” on Saturday night. Undeterred, Brown stormed from the back of the B Scramble on Friday, going from 10th to 4th and solidifying his pole position starting spot in the B on Saturday.
The Brown/Lasoski B main incident has been played and replayed, but the class shown by Brown on both audio and TV broadcasts were impressive. “My grandpa George is 70 years old, but he has the passion of a 30 year old. I guess people saw that at the Nationals.”
What the incident did do was remove all doubt that Brown marches to his own beat on the racetrack, and showed a maturity that had been developed over the last few years. “I wanted to make that race more than anything in the whole wide world. I knew that eventually something would probably happen between us, but the last thing I wanted was it to happen on national TV. It happened, and we’ve moved past it.”
The Postponement
September 2 - After following Clint Garner to the stripe on August 26, Alley and Brown were set for Season Championship night at Knoxville within 30 points. “All we could do was our best, and maybe that wouldn’t be good enough,” says Brown of his views going into the night.
Alley states, “I wasn’t nervous until I got there, but I’m not gonna lie to ya, when we were racing that night, I was.”
They were told the week before that a rainout would mean a cancellation of the finale, but no one mentioned a plan of action if the night’s activities were rained out after everything was run but the main event. Alley says, “Right after time trials, I thought it was gonna rain.” Someone with the team, erroneously told Alley he had dropped to second in points. “That got me all fired up, because they had said, ‘If it rains out, we’re done’! We were second in the heat and ‘back’ in the lead as far as I knew, and when it started rainin’, I said, ‘Let it Rain!’ The week before, Justin Zoch (track announcer) said, if it rains out, it won’t be made up. I don’t remember anyone saying, ‘If we run time trials and heat races and rains out, we’re still gonna do it’!”
A rescheduled WoO date on October 7 supplied an unprecedented opportunity. The feature event would be made up in addition to the night’s activities. Brown added, “I was looking forward to them getting it in that night (Sept. 2), because I thought the track would be narrow (Brown was slated to start 4th and Alley 9th).”
Officially, Brown held a slight advantage in time trial points, but a strong run in his heat (2nd) allowed Alley to increase his lead a bit before five weeks of waiting. “I’ve been doing a lot of (deer) hunting. If we win the thing, that’s great. If we lose it, I’m going to be devastated, because we are so close. I don’t think about it, because I don’t want to think about how cool it would be. It’s going to be tough, but it is big, because if you win it, you know you’ve won races and had a good year.”
Going into the finale Brown seemed calm, “We’ll give it our best shot. If we fall short, we may try again next year.”
Alley’s lead: 45
The Finale
October 7 – Fans and competitors welcomed mild October temperatures on a sunny Autumn evening. The feature would be run after 360 and WoO heats. Both had put themselves in the WoO main event before hitting the track for the race they had waited over a month for. Brown had won his WoO heat in dominating fashion, raising eyebrows, as Alley struggled to the fifth and final transfer in the same event after starting immediately behind the #21.
A pair of scratches saw Alley move up a row, and he now sat inside row four for the 25 lapper. Brown would be tough to beat outside of row two. The math had been made simple. Brown looked dominant earlier. If he would win, Alley would have to charge to at least third. What followed, could not be scripted.
Brown tucked in behind Dusty Zomer, the early leader. Brown dove low and slid up the dry-slick surface to take a lead he would not relinquish on lap 10. Alley had managed sixth and was finding the going difficult. On lap 11, his luck would change. Brent Antill, running fifth, contacted another car and went end over end eight times down the backstretch in a harrowing accident. Fortunately, he was uninjured. Two more laps were in the books, when Zomer, still running second, jumped the cushion in turn one and got upside down. That incident saw Alley assume fourth with Lynton Jeffrey between he and a championship. Alley could make no real move to pass Jeffrey, but he got what he needed on lap 18. Jeffrey’s left rear tire exploded, and Alley had third. A piece of Jeffrey’s tire had lodged in Alley’s mount, causing some serious smoke signals from his mount the last four laps. It was almost too much for everyone to bear, but he brought it home, along with a five-point championship, the closest margin in Knoxville Raceway history.
Brown had indeed given it ‘his best shot’. “He deserves it,” he would say after a warm hug of Alley. “Congratulations to Ed, Jeff Woodruff and the whole team. Five points, wow! I’m just proud of our team and our accomplishments this year.”
Alley called the night a “crazy deal”. “Brian Brown is a bad-ass race car driver, but we got it done baby!” Alley was “WFO” all season long.
Alley wins by 5
Mutual Respect
In the end, there is respect between these two young drivers. Brown says of Alley, “He’s probably one of my better friends in the racing community. He’s a heck of a racer. We’ve had a lot of good races together and I can only remember one instance where we were close to crashing each other. It’s nice to race someone ‘clean and close’ like him.”
Alley says, “He and I both have a good fan base, have had success and have a desire to win. That’s what drives us to be better than a lot of the other guys. It’s not to the level of Danny Lasoski vs. Steve Kinser, but Brian Alley vs. Brian Brown is something that I hope people someday talk about, and it’s just starting right now.”
Wherever their paths take them, Alley and Brown are building a strong foundation in the sport with their rivalry. The 2006 Knoxville Showdown for 410 supremacy was only the beginning.