Sam Yarbrough has been the most dominant driver at Myrtle Beach Speedway this season winning six of 11 points races so far and with four to go all he wants to do is win.
Yarbrough also had visions of playing into the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series National championship but after a struggling weekend at Southern National Motorsports Park last weekend, he’s content with just finishing out the season at Myrtle Beach Speedway and trying to win the remaining four races.
Yarbrough says he went to Southern National with a lot of unknowns and just didn’t get the results he expected after taking the wrong engine.
“We went in there with unknowns obviously like most people did,” Yarbrough told RACE22. “But, we went up there feeling like we should stand pretty good to run top five at least. We get up there and the car is driving really well, doing everything I’m asking and (Mike) Bushee walks over and says ‘Hey man you’re the first spec (Chevy Upgrade) I’ve had here all year. What can I do for you to help you out? Looks like you’re struggling a little bit.”
Yarbrough wondered what he had got himself into.
“I’m thinking to myself, I’m running old junk tires and we’re running 40’s out here and everything’s pretty good but sure we’ll take some weight off. No problem. Going into the weekend if you look on their website it shows that (Mike) Darne has been there with a spec and he’s qualified on the pole and won twice and that’s what I went there thinking we’d have a fair shot.”
That didn’t work out for Yarbrough as the Chevy Upgrade (Spec) is severely handicapped under the Limited Late Model rules that Southern National competes with.
“That wasn’t so,” Yarbrough continued. “We were the only spec there all year and we were handicapped pretty good against mostly a Harrington field I guess it was. The car drove well, I was eating people up in the corners but didn’t have the steam to make any moves. We took what we had and after the first race on Sunday we just loaded up.”
With three ninth-place finishes at Southern National, any potential National title run was wiped out for Yarbrough.
“We’re headed back to the beach right now,” Yarbrough explained as his team traveled to the track for Friday practice. “That’s our only plans right now. South Boston and Motor Mile, all of us are running pretty much the same dates from here on out. Doesn’t really leave many any options to go anywhere.”
“If we’d have gone to Southern National and had top-three finishes we would have been in a good position. We’d have to have some exceptional weeks at tracks we don’t know much about to even get into the top five I think.”
Yarbrough’s attention now turns back to Myrtle Beach, where he’s having one of his best years since 2015.
“2015 we had a chance to win them all,” Yarbrough said. “The car has been so consistent for me week to week. It’s been a great second half of the season.”
Despite Yarbrough’s success at Myrtle Beach, he knows that the track offers a unique challenge especially with the number of out of town drivers who show up to race.
“Myrtle Beach is one of those tracks that’s unlike any other,” Yarbrough explained. “The hardest part about racing there with a large field every week is track position. You have five to seven cars that can legit win the race. Then you’ve got another five cars that just want to get to the front and run their own race. So you’ve got people shuffling forwards and people shuffling backward and people just trying to hold their ground and save their stuff.”
Yarbrough is looking to maximize his opportunities for victories and hopes to end the season with four more victories.
“I’m going out there right now to win every race,” Yarbrough stated. “There’s guys like Will Burns with Lee McCall that are super fast. I was lucky enough to stay out in front of him the last race we were there, we led all the laps, I went harder than I wanted to but in the grand scheme of things, we gotta win all the races we can. There’s a lot of out of towners that come down here and they’ll flex their muscle for a little while.”
Yarbrough and a strong field of Late Models will take to the track for twin 40-lap features Saturday night. RACE22.com will have RACEDAY LIVE updates from the event.