By Shawn Brouse
Selinsgrove Speedway is set to cap off the 2009 season with the eighth annual Open for 358 sprints Saturday at 7 p.m..
Etters driver Pat Cannon has to be the favorite to claim the biggest event of the season for the weekly division aboard the Highlands No. 3 machine.
Cannon is the two-time, defending Open winner and a seven-time victor at the track this year.
This year's race pays $3,000 for 30 laps of work and although Cannon is the favorite, that's not to say he's not worried about the competition.
"Usually your normal guys," Cannon says of who he's most worried about keeping him from three-peating in the Open.
"Obviously (T.J.) Stutts has gotten faster the last couple weeks and (Blane) Heimbach's been hit or miss and you never know when Nate's going to put one together," Cannon said of newly crowned track champion Nate Snyder of Halifax.
Snyder identifies Cannon as his biggest nemesis to picking up his first win of the season at the track in the Open, despite claiming the title.
"I tell you what, he's definitely going to be good but he's definitely beatable," Snyder says of Cannon.
"There were nights when we were close to him. We gotta go with our A game and give it 100 percent but them boys there, they got their program together," he says of the Cannon/Highlands team.
As a two-time winner at the track this year and one-time 358 Open winner in 2005, Selinsgrove's Blane Heimbach feels he does have a shot at Cannon this weekend despite his own lack of consistent speed this year.
"I'm not really worried about stopping the three, cause if I have my car the way I need it, I won't have a problem," Heimbach says.
"He's just had his car really, really good, but he's beatable. But you gotta get your car right.
"You just gotta do everything you possibly can to put yourself in a position to win that race and that's what we plan on doing and if it works out for us it does and if not, then back to the drawing board again," said Heimbach.
Both Cannon and Heimbach expressed dismay that the marquee event for 358s at the track has seen a reduction in purse this year, paying $2,000 less to the winner than last year.
"Is it a disappointment? Heck yeah! It's always kind of scary when it goes down. And that could be a route to go back down the following year," Heimbach notes.
Cannon says he'd like to see the purse for the 358 Open mirror or better that of the 410s at the track instead of being less.
"You never want to go backwards or regress, you want to feel like you're moving forward and it is like you'd almost like to see the 358s get the bigger purse than the 410s, the way it's gone the last couple years," Cannon says of the track's trend in recent seasons of producing better fields of 358s and better racing.
But in the end, Cannon sums up everyone's game plan for Saturday night the best.
"You just gotta' be on your toes and go after it."
