POLLARD SCORES $60,000 SHOWDOWN DOUBLE
In a follow up to his Winter Showdown win at Kern County Raceway on March 1st, Bubba Pollard scored a victory in Saturday’s Summer Showdown at Evergreen Speedway to collectively win $60,000 in prize money and bonuses from the two events. SPEARS Southwest Tour Series drivers Derek Thorn and Parker Stephens finished 3rd and 5th respectively at the Summer Showdown.
It’s not often that a short track Super Late Model driver can say he scored $61,000 in winnings in one season. It’s even rarer that a driver can say he won that kind of money in just two races, but that’s exactly what Bubba Pollard did when he went out west and won the Summer Showdown at Monroe, Washington’s Evergreen Speedway.
The Senoia, Georgia driver certainly made the 2,690-mile trek worth his while by scoring the win and the big money that came with it.
“It’s almost unheard of,” said Pollard. “I never ever even imagined of first of all going across the country and getting a chance to race for this much money. And then to win it, it’s just incredible for our team.”
“The 15-car passed us early on and he was setting a pace that I didn’t want to run,” Pollard said. “I knew it was way too fast. So we were able to ride there and save tires and have a late-race caution that made the difference for us. We saved enough tires there to get it done at the end.”Pollard started on the pole, but got passed early by Tayler Riddle. That didn’t faze him, though, as he saved his tires for much of the race before making another charge.
Pollard used the same Grand American Race Car that he piloted to the win in the Winter Showdown at Kern County Raceway Park (CA) in February. He and his team built this race car specifically for that race, and it’s now brought him to two $25,000 checks. And, as a result of being the highest finisher in both Showdowns, Pollard scored a $10,000 bonus. He also pocketed $1,000 for winning the Pole Award at Evergreen on Saturday night.
Now, Pollard hopes to save this race car until December, because he believes that it can be the car that brings him his first Snowball Derby championship.
“If I can talk everyone else into it I sure hope we can save it,” he said. “That’s the plan right now. We built that car new to go to California and that car has been awesome to us. It’s just one of those cars that you’ll never get rid of. It was just fast after we unloaded it the first time.”
The only thing that Pollard has yet to figure out is what exactly makes this particular car so much better than the rest.
“I really can’t answer that because I have no idea,” he said with a laugh. “We have three or four race cars in our stable that are all identical and this one just seems to want to go fast. Even on its bad days it wants to go fast. You don’t run across race cars that often that run that well.”
So what’s Pollard going to do now that he’s $36,000 richer?
“We’re going to take a few weeks off here,” he said. “We’ve been doing a lot of racing and a lot of traveling all over the country. We’d like to do the Redbud 300 and the Pensacola deal and possibly some more ARCA races. It’s all kind of up in the air right now, so I’m just going to spend some time with my family and vacation and have some fun.”
