Sunday, August 31, 2003

By Chris Dolack, Special to the Post-Gazette

For the fourth time in the past six years, Brian Swartzlander is the V-8 modified champion at Lernerville Speedway.

In a competitive field, Swartzlander was able to reclaim the crown he lost to Kevin Bolland in 2002 with a remarkable early season run. In the first seven weeks of the 2003 season at the Sarver dirt track, Swartzlander won four features and finished second three times.

Although his luck was fading down the stretch, Swartzlander held off Jim Weller Jr. by 22 points to claim the 11th different track championship of his career. He has four titles from Tri-City Speedway, two from Sportsman's Speedway and one from Marion Center Speedway.

"I don't know that we're dominant," Swartzlander, 44, of Leechburg said. "I cut my teeth on that track. That's where I've run since I started racing back in '78. It's just like being at home. I've run there so many times that I just know the track well. We keep the car ready to race and we finish a lot of races. That's the key."

Failing to finish races early in the season derailed his title bid in '02 and struggles in the latter part of this season nearly cost him the '03 championship.

"Last year, the big thing with us was we started off the season with a lot of DNFs. We just didn't finish races and that killed us," Swartzlander said. "I don't think we finished a race in the first four weeks and that was due to wrecks. That got us out of the point race right off the bat. We finished kind of strong at the end of the year last year and we came out real strong this year.

We did nothing different other than change our motor program a little bit. We got a big jump on the point lead but I was a little bit disappointed from midseason on. We ran decent but we had a lot of little things that caused us some problems. We lost brakes a couple of nights, we had a plug wire come off, we had a lapped car spin in front of us that cost us a feature. Really, we didn't run much different than last year, things just went a little better."

Actually, given the level of opposition in the modified division at Lernerville, it is remarkable that Swartzlander has been able to remain on top for so long.

"There's a lot of competition right now. It's better than it has been in quite a few years," he said. "There's a lot of cars that can win. When we finish, we're usually up in there. That's the key to points racing. You don't even have to win races, you just have to be a consistent top-five runner and you can win the points. But if you take a couple of nights where you don't finish and get 20th or 22nd, it really knocks you out of the point race."

In the past, Swartzlander has raced at several tracks throughout the weekend, but this season he cut back on the schedule and focused mainly on Friday nights at Lernerville. With as much experience as he has, there was no need to gain seat time by racing two or three nights every weekend.

"Lernerville is totally different than all other tracks," he said. "The other tracks are good tracks to run, too, but Lernerville has its own style. It has a cushion, it always has two grooves. A lot of people have trouble running Lernerville, they have problems there and I don't know why. I've talked to some drivers who do well at other tracks who just hate Lernerville because they just can't get around it. We don't have a problem there. I love the track. I learned to drive on that track. I've made so many laps there that when I go out there I don't think about it, I just race."

As he celebrates his latest championship, Swartzlander will examine the future of his racing program after the season. For now, he says it's up in the air.

"We won our share of championships," he said. "I really didn't put a lot of emphasis on a championship. We weren't watching the points, but when you get three-quarters of the way through the season and you see that you're leading the points, you don't want to give it up. You hate to lose it on the last night. You really want to push for it but it doesn't really affect my racing style. If we're in the point lead or not, I still go out to win every race."

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

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