It was opening night on Sunday, April 17th at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway in Dubuque Iowa and I was lucky enough to be able to be in attendance. The fantastic weather that had prevailed all weekend continued with the temperatures peaking at over eighty degrees and with plenty of sunshine, it was a magnificent night for auto racing in the river town bordering on Wisconsin and Illinois.
As announcer Jerry Mackey told me, he couldn't remember a weekend ever in April where he was able to go racing three straight nights without any weather interference, and especially under such marvelous conditions. This would give those that attending last weekend's bitterly cold racing nights a chance to thaw out their bones just a little on one of Dubuque's earliest opening nights in quite a few years.
For the second straight year, Dubuque will be running a weekly program that features just four classes of racing. There are many pluses and minuses to this and one of the most unusual aspects to this four class program is that there is no so called entry level class. Along with Late Models and Modifieds, Sport Mods and Stock Cars fill out the card and none could be called beginner classes by any means, although I see more and more young drivers starting right out in the Sport Mods, a move that seems to backfire more often than not but continues to be done with increasing regularity. Perhaps part of this is due to the fact that there truly is no beginner class anymore.
Track officials were uncertain just what kind of car count they would have for the opener. They believed they would be solid in both open wheel classes and due to the fact that national points weren't available for the Late Models, they just weren't sure how many would show. It's surprising to me that some would fall into drinking the Kool Aide idea that unless points were available, what would be the sense of racing? Whatever happened to racing for the cash? As it turned out, there were fourteen Lates that signed in and they gave a fine account of themselves.
Officials were worried about the Stock Cars which is a class that never seems to have been able to build any kind of numbers at Dubuque and it appears that 2016 won't be much different as only seven were on hand for the opener.
Pioneer Rest Area was the event sponsor on this night and their traveling trophy for the feature winner would be going to the Sport Mods on Sunday. Purely by accident, I actually filled my car with gas at Pioneer on the way to the track, and while it was an accident, I was pleased to find out that I had supported a business that supports the track. They are located, by the way, just off of Hwy. 20 on the old road to the Fairgrounds.
It was a very late arriving crowd at Dubuque on Sunday as I suppose most Sunday night tracks are. It didn't seem to me to be the smashing crowd that I might have expected given the great weather but then again, estimating the crowd at Dubuque is always difficult as they are spread out over such a wide area.
I was disappointed at one of the opening night snafus that often hit a track on the first night and in this case, it was a nonworking speaker that made it impossible for those of us seated in the first turn area from hearing anything Mr. Mackey had to say. Thus, we missed out at hearing the winner's interviews as well as more information on the Mills family that was being honored on this night, having lost the patriarch of the family over the Winter.
The race program got started a little bit late on this night as a late watering of the track caused a little extra track packing to be needed. No doubt the sun and wind played a part in all of this. However, once they got rolling they made up lots of time and the whole race program was completed in just about two hours, key to the success of any Sunday night program.
The headline of this blog speaks to the bad luck that hit Jon Merfeld during the running of the Late Model feature. Merfeld had taken the lead early the race and had been chased for nearly twenty laps by Joel Callahan. Several times Joel would get to the rear bumper of Merfeld but each time Jon would then pick up the pack and gain more space between the two.
However, with only six laps left in the race a car running near the back of the pack would spin in turn four directly in front of the leaders and with no where to go, Merfeld plowed hard into the other car. The front end was gone on Jon's car and he took the long lonely walk back to the outfield pits, his car following him home on the wrecker. What a disappointing end to what could have been a big opening night victory. Callahan accepted the break given to him and led Jon Poll and Luke Merfeld home for the win.
The Modifieds spun off twenty five laps nonstop and after an early charge that saw him get under the car of Mark Schulte, Brandon Wilson raced home for an impressive win. Schulte hung on for second with Bryce Garnhart, up from the Sport Mods, finishing a strong third .
The Sport Mods had a shaky start with a couple of grinding crashes in the first five laps. However, once they got that out of their system, the last ten laps clicked off nonstop. Tyler Soppe put on the drive of the night, coming from the fifth row to take the win as he moved both low and high to pass cars and carve his way to the front. Mike Mills was not able to hold off Soppe but as much as he would have liked to win on the night honoring his father, Mills was very gracious in victory lane to congratulate Soppe.
With only seven cars taking the green, the Stock Cars didn't provide much on the track entertainment as Jerry Miles led easily all the way. However, there was plenty going on off the track that amused and entertained those who saw what was happening.
Early in the race, while battling for position, Tim Helle and Kyle Nesteby tangled on the back chute with the front nose of Nesteby's car being torn loose. Track officials sent Nesteby to the pits to have the nose removed but no matter what they tried to do, they simply couldn't get the nose to come off the car and the race restarted without him.
Nesteby was clearly not pleased and after spinning a couple of donuts at his pit spot which raised a huge cloud of dust, He nearly launched his race car right through the back of his tow vehicle when he hit his trailer at about thirty miles per hour too fast. He then nearly wore out his arm as he leaned over the inside guard rail and flipped Helle "the bird" on nearly every lap left in the race. With all this "activity" so early in the season, I can hardly wait to find out what happened when it gets hot and humid in July!
With opening night track conditions always a question mark at nearly every track in the Midwest, track officials did some interesting things at Dubuque on Sunday. Normally the track is raced on from inside guard rail all the way up to the wall. However, after watering the whole track, they put down some big tractor tires at least two car lengths out from the rail during the heats which out of necessity forced the cars to run more through the middle of the track.
However, right before the features they removed the tires and after packing the track for a few laps, ran the feature races on the now opened up track. I'm sure the theory was that by doing this there would be more groves for the feature. Instead however, the cars all went to the moisture right on the rail and that's where they raced during the main events. The only problem was that the inside wasn't packed down near as tight and being loose, it produced a lot of dust that just hung in the air with the wind having died down.
A few drivers tried to run up against the wall but that lane was just too far around on this night and most everybody settled back into the low groove. However, I give the track crew an "A" for at least trying something to make the track as racy as possible.
As always, it was enjoyable to spend some time with the heart and soul of Simmons Promotions Inc.(Jerry Mackey, Kevin Feller and Doug Haack.) and with a solid field of cars and a program that allowed me to be on the road home by 8:45 pm, the night was a big winner.
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