LAWNDALE, N.C. (May 3) — Chris Madden's plans to compete in the Skyler Trull Memorial at Cleveland County Speedway were uncertain following the death of his father-in-law on Tuesday. The funeral for Steve Spears, a retired deputy sheriff, was at 3 p.m. Saturday, but Madden and his team traveled to the racetrack later in the afternoon. | Saturday race | Saturday slideshow | Friday race | Friday sildeshow

It wasn't the easiest day to concentrate on racing for the Gray Court, S.C., driver. "Yeah, it was tough. It was really tough," said Madden, who started ninth and finished third in the 58-lap feature. "My wife, she wanted to come up here and race. I told her, whatever she wanted to do, I'd do it for her."

Stephanie Madden's father was mowing the lawn at his Pacolet, S.C., home when a driver on Highway 150 lost control of his SUV and veered off the road at high speed, striking the 61-year-old Spears, who had his back to the oncoming vehicle. The SUV driver, 18-year-old Daniel A. Bailey of Cowpens, S.C., was charged with reckless homicide.

Madden was prepared to sit out the weekend for the funeral and family time, but Stephanie Madden decided Chris should head to the racetrack. "She said that's what her daddy would want us to do," Madden said, "and that's what we did."

Chupp's team on the upswing

Randle Chupp of Troutman, N.C., got rolling with his Jack Starrette-owned team with a $20,000 weekend sweep of two races at Cleveland County Speedway. The Skyler Trull Memorial events marked the highlight of a 2008 season that began with struggles in January action at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., and few solid finishes so far this spring. Building positive momentum isn't easy, Chupp said.

"Jack and the guys, they don't race exactly full time, so hitting a rhythm is tougher on us because we run only 25 or 30 races a year, where somebody like (runner-up Tim McCreadie) and some of them run 60. I feel like that has some of the involvement in our peaks and valleys, and some of it is created by the more you race, the better decisions you seem to make.

"I didn't really officially start driving for them until about mid-season last year, and I think we won eight races from July 5 until the fall at Phenix City (in November), and we could've won another two or three pretty easily. We had five seconds. So I feel like we've been running good. It's just awful hard to keep people's attention when we basically only (race) at the bigger events in the area. It's real easy to make a mistake and be completely out of the picture against this level of guys, and when you execute well and you've got good equipment, it doesn't really matter who's there, because I feel like we've got as good as equipment to win regardless of who's there. Just our execution has got to be spot-on. If we don't win, it's because somebody else's execution was better on a given night."

Chupp raced out of Tennessee earlier in his racing career, and adjusting to new tracks and new track surfaces in the Carolinas has taken a little time. He's raced at Cleveland County (formerly Thunder Valley) and Cherokee Speedway the most, so that gave him a little edge May 2-3.

"Tennessee tracks are like clay, and it takes a little bit of time to get used to the different surfaces that the Carolina has, which is more of a sand and silt type of a surface," Chupp said. "It took us a while to get the car setups changed around to suit my driving style for this type of surface."

McCreadie chases Chupp all weekend

In Saturday's 58-lap finale at Cleveland County Speedway, Tim McCreadie might've had a little deja vu. After all, Saturday's race saw him chasing Randle Chupp throughout the race, much like Friday's feature.

"It was about the same race pretty much," the Watertown, N.Y., driver said. "The one thing I did learn last night after the race is that, late in the race, it did get to where you could run the outside there. I didn't try it last night and stayed on the bottom, stayed on the bottom. Actually I was a little closer to him last night at points. Tonight I figured there might be an outside there, and there was, but it's hard. You've gotta get all the way out there for a guy to see you, and I never got all the way beside him. It was exciting."

McCreadie described Chupp's performance as impeccable in holding him off on the 4/10-mile oval.

"I had my chances," he said. "We had some side-by-side running, we had some heavy lapped traffic, we had our shots. He made one mistake with like four (laps) to go and drove into the mud in (turns) one and two and shot across, and I was like two car lengths back. I hadn't been that far back most of the night. ... but he drove flawless two nights. You gotta take your hat off to him. He outqualified me both nights and outran me in the feature both nights. No disappointment."

Two finishes help boost Eller

Sometimes, there's something to be said simply for finishing a race. And when Damon Eller wrapped up his two-race weekend in Lawndale with 12th-place and fifth-place finishes — and he was running at the conclusion of both events — it was cause for at least a little celebration. Over the previous month or so, Eller and his team had been struggling with fuel-pressure problems that left them scratching their heads. The team finally figured out the problems were related to a change in motor oils.

"The zinc in the oil was eating our push rod off that pushes the fuel pump," the 29-year-old driver from Crumpler, N.C., said. "We fought it over about a month. It was different oil, but it was Mobil-1, supposed to be the best racing oil there is. They didn't tell us you needed to put an additive in it or it would wear the copper end off that (push rod). It would wear it off to a certain point, and then it wasn't pushing the fuel pump far enough, and we didn't have enough fuel pressure.

"We hunted and changed fuel lines, drained fuel cells, carburetors, we did everything. Then we finally found it. It went on about a month. We burned one motor up looking for it."

With the problem finally solved, Eller was back to concentrating on racing. The 12th-place finish was so-so, but running in the top five behind champion drivers like Randle Chupp, Tim McCreadie, Chris Madden and Casey Roberts made Saturday noteworthy.

"I was just glad to finish," Eller said. "I told (a crew member), we didn't even miss, we didn't tear nothing up, and we finished two races and I'm happy. Maybe the bad luck will get out of our system early, I hope.

"I was steady. I got good right there in the middle of the race one time, then it sort of settled out. As the tires wore, I started really struggling getting off of (turns) three and four. But we finished. And we hadn't finished a race in about a month and a half."

The best tires at Lawndale? Tough call

Those with a vested interest in tire manufacturing kept a close eye on the Skyler Trull Memorial, a race where competitors could use any Dirt Late Model tire. That pitted Randle Chupp on American Racers against Tim McCreadie on Hoosiers, and Chupp came out on top in the finale.

Except for Chupp's tires firing a little quicker on restarts, McCreadie played down the tire battle, chalking up the tight racing among the top two finishers to "two very equal cars."

"It's always, when you have open tires like this, it's always a deal between the two companies of what's better. I don't think it was a tire issue so much tonight, I really don't. If it was, it would've been a bigger discrepancy," McCreadie said. "Randle was good. We were both on American (Racers) last night, because you had to (according to Carolina Clash rules), and he was just as good. And I was just as good tonight on my Hoosier stuff, so I don't think it was a tire issue. I think he had a car that was really good for the first six or seven laps of a run, and then I'd get the same or a tick better than him, and that's just the way it goes sometimes."

Chupp was pleased with his tires in Friday's victorious performance, but he weighed whether to switch to Hoosiers for Saturday's action.

"Friday night, I'd found a really sweet setup, I thought, for the American Racer tires," Chupp said. "And then today, we were tossing back and forth what to do about tires. The car was so good last night, I wanted to see somebody be better than me on the stopwatch on (Hoosiers) before I led the charge to go to something else. We hot-lapped on 'em, qualified on 'em and we were right in the hunt for the win the whole time. I noticed T-Mac put the Hoosiers on for the race, so I was a little concerned that maybe the home team might beat me, but in the camp I'm in, everybody's confidence was in what had happened the night before."