Makin’ Laps On A Rainy Day In Georgia

Heavy rain prevented a car from hitting the dirt surface of Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga., on Saturday night, but that didn’t stop several World of Outlaws Late Model Series drivers and crewmen from getting some racing in.

During a portion of the period between a soaking late-afternoon shower and the strong storm that arrived at 7:45 p.m. to postpone Screven’s WoO LMS program to Nov. 1 or 2, Screven promoter Redd Griffin invited the national tour’s teams to pass some of the drying-out time by running Sprint Karts on his facility’s brand-new ‘fun’ track. Outlaws quickly flocked to the small paved oval that Griffin recently built outside turns three and four of his three-eighths-mile speedway to provide another entertainment option during his events.

Griffin waived the $5-per-ride pricetag for the World of Outlaws gang, allowing them to become the first to battle it out in the seven Sprint Car-like caged karts that he purchased a couple weeks ago in Butler, Pa., and hauled back to Georgia. And battle it out they did, pushing and shoving around the circular track as an ever-growing number of bystanders looked on through the catch fence of Griffin’s “little superspeedway.”

One of the racing groups that hit the track included WoO LMS drivers Josh Richards, Shane Clanton, Austin Hubbard and Brent Robinson and crewmen Randall Edwards (Darrell Lanigan’s crew chief) and Nick Hover (Hubbard’s mechanic). Their nearly 10-minute-long run – part of which is shown in the video clip below – saw Hubbard inflict the most damage; his rough-housing right turns sent both Richards and Clanton spinning and his inside dive threw infield dirt on Hover. 

Richards, meanwhile, ran into some trouble on the final lap of his Sprint Kart stint when his wallet popped out of his pocket and flew out of the cockpit of his car, sending his ID, credit cards and other paraphernalia scattering across the third and fourth turns of the track. He had to walk onto the track to pick up his personal items and search out his wallet…check out the video below for that scene.