User blog:Ajaxcupseries/2022 12th Annual Windows 300 Preview

The Fallon Corner - April 2022

Its hard to believe we’ve almost reached the halfway point of the ASCA campaign considering it feels like just yesterday I was here on The Fallon Corner previewing the Ajax 200 and 2022 as a whole.

Over the course of the past seven Ajax Cup races, we’ve figured out who the true championship contenders will be come Belltown in June, and begun to weed out the championship pretenders that had a great first quarter of 2022, but have returned back to where we expected them to be in points the past three weeks.

Heading into this season’s Windows 300 however, things feel quite a bit different.

For the first time since this race was the ASCA’s Modern Era opener back in 2015, big names like Diego Orkedi, Randle Woods, and Nick Orkedi are NOT the clear cut favorites for this event. In fact, none of those drivers have won so far this season, the first time that’s ever happened this deep into a Cup campaign.

Instead, the story of 2022 so far has been the youth movement FINALLY taking over the sport like fans and pundits alike expected them to do years ago, plus a veteran having the season of his life trying to spoil the party for the young kids.

Sunday night will go a long way in determining how the remainder of this season plays out. Either the youth movement firmly stakes their claim that they run the ASCA now with a statement victory from one of the young guns, OR Randle Woods and Diego Orkedi FINALLY wake up from their respective slumps, make their own championship statement by scoring their first win of the year in the sport’s biggest race, and one of those two go on a magical run similar to what Orkedi did in 2020 to signify the veteran’s time atop the sport isn’t up just yet.

Either way, here’s a few storylines I will be following closely on April 26th at 7 PM EST.

Back to Back?
Remember when I predicted Norm Lester to win the 2022 Ajax Cup Championship in my preseason preview article back in February?

I hate to toot my own horn, BUT…..

The 35 year old right now is putting together the season of his life.

Before 2022, Lester had only 4 Ajax Cup victories to his credit, never winning more than once in a single season.

This year though, the New Orleans native looks like a completely different driver.

Victories at The Stoneyard and Belltown have been backed up with 3 top 5’s, 4 top 10’s, plus 146 laps led, and while the 19 camp had an abysmal performance at the Streets of Computerville after a qualifying mishap led to a dreadful 18th place result, this team showed a lot of resolve coming out the very next week when Lester became the 4th straight points leader to secure the million dollar bag in the Ajax All-Star Race.

While the second half of Lester’s campaign last year was an absolute disaster with 5 DNF’s in the final 8 races after his Windows 300 victory, like I said in my season preview article none of those accidents he was involved in were directly his fault.

Lester and Co. still showed the same speed they had in the first half of the season when they were top 5 in points, they just happened to have quite possibly the worst luck in ASCA history down the stretch that ruined any shot they had at a title.

Now looking at how the 19 team has responded this year….sure they’ve had their off weeks like Denver and the Streets of Computerville that they can’t afford to have down the stretch.

But when Lester has been on…..he’s ON.

Sure, he’s been far from dominant like his teammate Randle Woods was last year, but if there’s a Michael White Racing car I’m picking to win the Windows 300 this season it’d absolutely be him.

Its incredible to think that Lester was on a 58 race winless drought heading into this race last season considering he’s now won 3 times in his last 16 starts.

What a difference a great team and great equipment makes in this business.

A Legend’s Final 300 Start
This might be the most emotional weekend of Jimmy Hood’s swan song campaign, and it may not be close.

Yes, his final start at Advocare Speedpark was emotional because of how much he owned that place in his prime, but the Windows 300 is on a whole different level from the Advocare 200 in terms of prestige.

Back when Jimmy Hood won this event in 2014, he was CRYING in victory lane.

He knew at that moment he had reached the pinnacle of the sport, and that victory seemed to spark the prime of his career where he basically ran the sport from 2014-2018.

Before Diego Orkedi and Randle Woods were racking up victories and championships like hotcakes, it was Jimmy Hood that was doing this.

He was the man at Ronnie Woods Motorsports during this time, not the team owner’s son Randle Woods, and many would say that Hood beating Woods head to head at Belltown in 2017 was the final straw that led to Woods leaving RWM to head to Michael White Racing in 2019.

During this 2014-18 five year stretch, Hood racked up 12 victories and 2 championships, a pretty solid career for most drivers but numbers put up in only a half decade by the Belltown native.

Its been 59 races since Jimmy Hood last visited victory lane in the Cup Series, and many newer viewers never having witnessed him win an Ajax Cup race may wonder why we’re giving all this coverage to a guy that hasn’t been a championship contender in nearly half a decade.

But when his full time Cup career is all said and done on Belltown in June 20th, Hood will EASILY go down as one of the greatest drivers this sport has ever seen.

The former King of Short Tracks deserves a proper sendoff in his final Windows 300 start, and while I’m supposed to be staying impartial here I won’t lie when I say I’ll be incredibly thrilled if the near four year winless drought ends on Sunday night.

12 Years of Trying, 12 Years of Frustration?
Just as we documented in the Ajax 200 preview, Randle Woods has accomplished literally all you dream of doing in this sport already in his career.

2 Cup championships, 23 career Cup victories, 52 overall ASCA triumphs, the man has seemingly done it all.

Everything that is, EXCEPT scoring wins in the two biggest events in the sport - the Ajax 200 and Windows 300.

While the Ajax 200 can be a total crapshoot with the known chaos and calamity we’ve seen in the past at Ajax Superspeedway, Woods finished 3rd in that event last season and brought home a runner up result there in the season opener, so maybe 2023 will be his year?

On the other hand, the Windows 300 has been an entirely different beast for the Computerville native, one he has been simply unable to tame thus far.

It has to been sickening for Woods to see his longtime arch nemesis Diego Orkedi leading the way in 300 triumphs with three of them to date considering the poor luck Woods has had in this race his entire career.

The closest he’s come to date so far is back in 2015, when he lost out to Nick Orkedi in a photo finish during the first race of the modern era.

Since then, he’s suffered not one, not two, but THREE blown engines in this event over the course of the past six years, most notably the one that came last season.

The stars seemed like they had finally aligned for once for the son of ASCA legend Ronnie Woods to score his first Windows 300 victory.

Randle Woods was spanking the field in the points standings heading into that race with a full race points lead over Diego Orkedi, destroyed the field in the All-Star Race despite a late challenge from his young teammate Devin Smith, and smacked the field in qualifying by smashing the previous track record set by Greg Healey in 2020.

Heading into that race, you had to think what could POSSIBLY go wrong to cost Woods the 300 this time around?

Woods as expected paced the field for the opening 59 laps with ease, but things began to unravel when the 18 team had an uncontrolled tire penalty in the pits, setting him back to 10th on the lap 65 restart.

While normally a penalty like that would absolutely ruin a driver’s night, Woods’ car was so good he drove from 10th back to the lead by lap 121, and seemed to be smooth sailing driving off into the night until…….his engine expired 32 laps from the finish.

After leading a career high 114 laps in this race last season only to fall short like that, you can bet the defending champion will absolutely be motivated to finally get that monkey off his back.

It also should be noted that at age 34, Woods is likely starting to reach the tail end of his career, so how many Windows 300 starts does he have left in him?

This only makes Sunday night that much more crucial for another one of the greatest drivers the sport has ever seen.

Youth Movement’s Time to Shine?
We’ve talked all about the young kids finally thrusting their way into the spotlight this season with four of the five different winners so far being aged 27 or younger, but Sunday night will be the biggest test to truly find out if they’re ready to be fully branded as bonafide ASCA superstars just yet.

Many of the big name veterans still racing today once took home this race as a young driver, which really led to their ASCA careers finally taking off once and for all afterwards.

Diego Orkedi won the inaugural running of this race as a 19 year old rookie in 2010, and do we even need to say how much his career has taken off since then?

Jimmy Hood won this race in 2014 as a 28 year old, and we discussed earlier in this article the run of success he went on after that.

Nick Orkedi won this race in 2015 as a 25 year old, and he would capture his maiden Ajax Cup championship the following season.

Brynn Rennerd won this race in 2016 as a 24 year old, and he would eventually become the first in ASCA history to complete the crown jewel sweep in 2020.

Caleb Henderson Jr. won this race in 2017 and 2018 as a 24 and 25 year old, and despite his recent retirement he was still one of the most successful drivers of the modern era with 6 career wins.

Unless you’re Randle Woods, winning the Windows 300 seems like the ASCA’s required passport to stardom in the sport. Even Norm Lester, who wasn’t young at all when he won the 300 last season at 34 years old has looked like a completely different driver since then.

So what do Todd Kidd, Greg Healey, and Chris Barrymore all have in common?

Despite being the three biggest young stars the ASCA has been heavily marketing since 2019, they’ve also all finished 2nd in the Windows 300.

If one of those three can bring home the checkered flag on Sunday night, there is no exaggeration when I say they will likely cement themselves as the face of the sport for the rest of the decade.

And my Windows 300 Pick is…..
In my preseason Cup Series preview, I picked Randle Woods to finally capture that elusive Windows 300 trophy, assuming while he wouldn’t be as dominant as he was last season he’d still find a way to get the job done.

While his first seven races of 2022 have been….lackluster to say the least along with his performance in the All-Star race last week, I’m sticking with my prediction of the defending champion here.

The 100th Modern Era Cup race at the Streets of Computerville a couple weeks back showed that Woods is far from being “washed up” after winning his 20th career pole and leading 80% of the laps, and that he still has that same competitive edge that’s made him so successful as he showed when he roughed up his teammate Jared Ayers after the checkered flag.

The 12th try has to be the charm, right?