Home >  Sports >  Notebooks

Sunday, April 07, 2002

He had been up most of the night working on his race cars, but John Flinner still had a glint in his eye when the subject of the upcoming season at Lernerville Speedway was raised.

Flinner will be back at the Sarver oval, where he won six features and his first late model track championship last season.

His title defense was supposed to begin Friday, one reason he spent most of the previous night -- into the morning -- putting the finishing touches on his cars. But once again, inclement weather this weekend pushed back the first night of racing at tracks in the region.

Friday, in his raceshop near Zelienople, Flinner sounded determined to defend his title.

"It'll be more interesting, I think," said Flinner, whose aggressive driving style seems to have made as many friends as rivals over the years. "I'm going to take two cars every Friday night, just to make sure. If we win it this year, it'll mean more than it did last year. Last year, it was our first time; the second time you can really rub it in."

Surprisingly, though, for a guy who has won at least one feature every year since 1987, he rarely goes into a race believing he will win.

"I don't have a positive attitude," Flinner said. "When I pull out of here, I already think I'm going blow up, break, crash. If I cheat on myself, we have a pretty good chance, I think. If we don't break.

"I thought about that last night. We can't always have these good years. I've been pretty fortunate and had some pretty good years. As long as I win a feature or two every year, I think I've done good. I'd rather win 10 races at Lernerville than win the championship."

Flinner, who has 17 career wins at Lernerville, was a regular competitor in the Mid-Atlantic Championship Series. With the MACS circuit traveling farther and farther from its roots -- the series opens May 10 in Kentucky -- some drivers find it more economical to compete at tracks within a day's drive of their base.

"They're too far out now," Flinner said. "They're trying to be a STARS series now; they'll never be that. They've changed to time trials and all that. They should have done that four years ago. They want you to tear down all the way to Florence, Ky., and they've got one in New Jersey. They originally started out in Ohio, Maryland ... now you're talking about leaving the night before to get there.

"There's money to be made around the local stuff. Not every night at Lernerville on a regular night because only one guy can win and all those other positions don't pay well, but they'll have a couple of specials there and a couple of specials at [Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Motor Speedway]. You can be a big-time racer and not have to travel that far."

He considers the drivers and competition in the area as some of the best anywhere.

"I think Western Pennsylvania drivers are a pretty good caliber," he said. "There have been a lot guys who came out of this area who have made it big time in some sort of racing. I think if you can just conquer the dirt world, you've done pretty good. Everybody asks about going NASCAR and all that stuff and I'm like, 'Man, I just want to win these kinds of races.' "

Included in those MACS drivers who are going to stay closer to home this season is Lynn Geisler, a two-time MACS champion who has 92 career late model wins and two track titles at Lernerville. He's also one of Flinner's oldest rivals, and he plans to race at Lernerville on a fairly regular basis this season. Geisler's presence is one of the reasons Flinner decided to defend his championship.

"I wasn't going to [come back], but I was kidding around saying there'll be some more competition with Geisler being there," said Flinner, who believes some people are under the impression he had an easy time en route to winning last year's title despite competing against tough drivers such as David Scott, Nick Jones and Bob Wearing Jr. "I just can't turn down going there and fighting it out with the boys.

"Lynn used to be my big rival, but I think we ironed that out -- for now."

Chris Dolack can be reached at cdolackpost-gazette.com.