Monday night was everything that makes Chili Bowl great.
The opening night of preliminary action, which begins setting the field for the main event on Saturday, featured all the exhilarating action, heartbreak and triumph in equal parts you could ever want while consuming this event.
Kyle Larson won as he is prone to do in this building on a preliminary night. It was his ninth win in 18 qualifying night attempts. He defeated Shane Golobic on a green-white-checkered, meaning that Golobic did what he is prone to do in this building too, coming just short of a win.
That’s eight top-fives on his various qualifying attempts, and three straight runner-ups but you know, ‘big picture.’
Monday Night (Cannon) McIntosh was very much a show for good and bad. Briggs Danner broke hearts at Alex Bowman Racing and Brent Crews did hero shit. It was all tremendous theater.
Golobic, still seeking his first win in this building had a choice on the final lap. Having lost the lead to Larson on the restart, his momentum could have carried him right into hooking the two-time winner on the bumper.
Basically, a bump-and-run.
“If you don’t at least think about it, you shouldn’t be here,” Golobic said, before concluding that actually doing it would have placed a significant asterisk on the victory he has chased in this building for a decade.
Would Larson have at least understood?
“No, I probably would have been more mad because he is such a good clean racer,” Golobic said. “I would have been like, dumbfounded, and surprised that he did it.”
Again, Golobic just chose to slide across three and four alongside him.
“For me, I don’t know, maybe I’m old school or whatever but I can’t do it,” Golobic said. “It’s not in my blood. I can’t just loop a guy for a win. It just doesn’t mean the same thing to me. I just wouldn’t do it. It would have an asterisk in my mind then so I just couldn’t do it. So he just flat out beat me. You just have to be a man and swallow that.
Meanwhile …
“I’m glad he didn’t dump me,” Larson said.
Golobic kept saying during the press conference, ‘big picture,’ recognizing that he is once again in the main event and will have a chance at the pole and win on Saturday night.
“But little picture, not fun,” he said.
The old adage in racing is that ‘if you can’t win the show, be the show,’ and McIntosh and Crews both embodied that on Monday.
Both involved in heat race crashes, one with each other that left McIntosh upside down, it’s wild to think both ended up in the top-five by the end of the night.
McIntosh recovered immediately and started seventh in the feature and led laps before settling for third but Crews had to drive all the way through his C, B and A features.
It was a testament to his status as one of the rising multi-discipline prospects in motorsports.
And then Danner, making his Alex Bowman Racing debut, getting bit by the cushion racing Golobic for the lead.
“Yeah, it’s tough,” Danner said. “I mean, I’m probably harder on myself than (my crew) guys are.
“I should have been able to give them a podium, maybe a lock in and its just disappointing for all of us. Gotta learn from it and move on.”
This doesn’t even include the herculean effort from Dillon Welch to get to 10th or Jerry Coons qualifying for his 25th consecutive Saturday feature.
There are some many people that just watch Chili Bowl on Saturday, and maybe it’s a good feature, and maybe not but the real beauty of this event is the consequence of every lap.
There were two winners on Monday — Larson and Golobic. For finishing top-5, McIntosh, Crews and Ashton Torgerson start Saturday from a B.
Think about that for a second.
The difference between second and third on Monday night was the difference between starting in the top-10 of the feature to having no guarantee of being in it at all.
All of this, again, the consequence of every lap and pass is what makes the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals.
