Sunday, August 24, 2003

By Chris Dolack, Special to the Post-Gazette

In June at Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Motor Speedway, veteran late model drivers were routinely rolling into victory lane each Saturday night.

It was enough to leave second-year late model racer Al Atallah to contemplate touring with his Phil Lukon-owned team. Who could fault him if he had ventured out to the touring circuits? Atallah had risen through the ranks at PPMS from spectator stock cars to the top division. In fact, last year he became the first rookie late model driver to win a track title. But Atallah shook off his early sophomore slump and started to climb through the standings by early July. So he stayed. Now, it would take a major disaster for him to fail to repeat as champion. He had an 83-point lead over Steve Baker before last night.

"Right now, we're just trying to conserve our equipment to try to get [the PPMS championship] because our big sponsors are right here in the Western Pennsylvania area, so we want to keep that commitment up and it would be nice to win a championship for them," Atallah said. "I guess [the turnaround is] a combination of a lot of hard work and a lot team communication between me and Phil. We work a lot on the setups together every week. We try to work together to make the car better every week because the competition is so tight that 0.8 seconds on a lap can mean the difference between two or three positions throughout a race."

In only a year and a half behind the wheel of a late model, Atallah has amassed enviable statistics, including 10 victories.

"I've always taken this approach all throughout my racing career, from pure stocks all the way up to the late model division," he said. "You can never go into it with a cocky attitude like you're just going to dominate because you win a race or you've beaten some big guns in the business. You can't go into with the attitude that you can't be beat. I've always taken the laid-back approach and however the cards play out, they play out, but I always take the conservative approach with the chassis, the tires, all the way down to the driving. Everybody gets fired up and pumped up and, at the drop of the green flag, everybody's ready to go like hell. Sometimes you just have to sit back and wait for other drivers to make mistakes and hope to capitalize on that.

"What really amazes me, and I don't think it's because of their equipment or talent or anything, is there are guys who have been racing for 10 or 12 years and never won a late model race. I've won 10 in a year and a half just in late model. That doesn't include all the other stuff I've driven and won in. I always tell people, if it ended tomorrow, I'd be happy with it."

Should he wrap up the 2003 title, Atallah would like to put together a program for 2004 that would allow him to race, at the very least, on the Mid Atlantic Championship Series circuit.

"We're talking now. It depends on sponsorship," he said. "Phil does everything out of his shop, that's his business to build cars and build racecar parts. It all goes on financial support, too. We're trying to lock up some pretty big deals for next year so that we can possibly hit the road. We like how that MACS series looks. It's a limited schedule, but they have a nice program and points fund. That's one option, but I work for a living and all of our crew is volunteer. Obviously, if we were in Winston Cup we could afford to pay everybody. The commitment from everybody on our team, it's basically they're out there with their own money out of their pockets. You can't say enough about them."

Looking ahead

The All-Star Circuit of Champions sprint car series will race Friday night at Lernerville Speedway in the 16th annual Earl and David Bauman Memorial, a 35-lap sprint car race paying $6,000 to win and $400 to start. There also will be a pure stock event. ... Friday night at Motordrome Speedway is a regular show as Rick Miller tries to continue fending off Neil Brown and Garry Wiltrout in late models. ... Saturday evening, PPMS will run a regular show with a special limited late model feature while Jennerstown Speedway has a 200-lap late model event scheduled.

Chris Dolack is the senior writer of Auto Racing Digest magazine. He can be contacted at cdolack@chrisdolack.com.

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