ROSSBURG, Ohio – The glass slipper fit on Saturday night, but not before Kasey Kahne tried to break it three nights before in a five-car tangle late in the NASCAR Prelude to the Dream, one that tore the side off Steve Casebolt's primary car.
"Oh, that's nothing compared to what I've done to it," said Casebolt, whose crew had all day Thursday to make repairs.
In the closing laps of The Dream, Casebolt had two other problems – he was fading on long runs after his tires heated up and he had last year's winner Scott Bloomquist on his tail. Circumstances could have easily robbed Casebolt of the victory, but instead he lived out one of those storybook plotlines that makes auto racing so compelling.
In only his second Dream feature, Casebolt posted the eight quickest times on Friday night and benefited from the three-car inversion to start on the outside of the front row of his heat race to easily beat Josh Richards and Jimmy Owens to the finish line. Casebolt had a little more difficult time in the feature race when the number of cars inverted increased to six. That meant he had to start in the fifth position, but he wasn't going to be denied the biggest win of his career. Casebolt drove into the lead on lap 21 of the 100-lap feature and paced every circuit after that.
If it sounds easy, it wasn't. Lurking deep in the field was Bloomquist, who may very well be the best dirt late model racer in recent history.
"Last week, we won a Lucas Oil race at Florence and I drove by Bloomquist and I beat him, but he ended up finishing fifth so it wasn't quite as good," Casebolt said. "Everyone kind of measures how good you are by how much you beat him by, or by how well he is that night. I think everybody saw tonight that we had the best car."
Bloomquist had to come from deep in the field during the feature after finishing his heat in third place, which was good enough to advance into the big show but caused him to start back in the 14th position. By dirt track standards, a 100-lap race is a marathon. With very few caution flags early in the race, though, Bloomquist, the "Voodoo Child," had to work his magic in heavy traffic all night. He climbed to sixth by lap 36, was fifth on lap 45 and third by lap 57. It took only a little while longer to track down Scott James and pass him for second on lap 66. Then he set his sights on the leader.
Bloomquist finally got a caution flag on lap 79 that allowed him to close the gap, but the young gun Casebolt proved to be much better on restarts when the track was less slick than it was in heavy traffic. On Saturday night, the clay surface dried quickly and the dust kicked up by the lap-down cars made Casebolt extremely loose when he was close behind them.
Bloomquist thrives on those conditions.
On a half-mile track, however, it doesn't take long to close back in on traffic, and Casebolt was caught by the back markers once more with only three laps remaining. Bloomquist closed to within a car length, and while the starter prepared to hold up two fingers to signal the number of laps remaining, the cagy veteran dug his nose into the bottom groove and powered up onto the straightaway out of Turn 4.
The fans in the stands jumped to their feet. Half of them cheered Bloomquist in his quest for his fifth Dream victory and half encouraged Casebolt. Then the caution waved.
That final yellow flag sealed both drivers' fate, as Casebolt easily yarded Bloomquist on the restart and motored to his third consecutive victory in three different series in his last three races. In addition to the Lucas Oil victory at Florence, Ky., Casebolt won an American Late Model Series race at Gas City, Ind., last week in an old car he had sitting around the shop. That victory paid $2,000 to win. On Saturday night, he pocketed $100,000.
"This has been kind of a long time coming," Casebolt said. "We haven't been in the spotlight that much, but there've been several nights when I thought, 'If we'd just done this thing differently, we'd have a shot at beating these guys,' and we did it tonight."