Seriously, it wasn't near as bad as that but I'm sure that I caught a few Simmons Promotions Inc. folks off guard when I showed at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway for the second straight Sunday night of racing.
Let's face it, a four and a half hour plus drive, depending whether the wind is at my back or not, is not something that a lot of people(sane or not) will do but with the weather being dreadful in my home area and plenty of sun shining to the South, I'm more than willing to put in the time required to see some good Sunday night racing. And one thing that SPI has shown that they will do, and that is to move through a quickly paced program that will get the folks who pay the freight out the doors at an early hour, thus making Monday morning not near as painful.
When I left home it was forty eight degrees and had been pouring most of the night and was still raining as I left. When I jumped out of the car in Dubuque it was seventy five degrees, the sun was shining and later when the wind dropped down, it was a near perfect night to be outside for dirt track racing.
Before we talk about the racing, let's spend an important moment discussing how a race program should be run off, particularly on a night when some people might be just a little "gun shy" to go out to the races. SPI has had the smart notion not to try and run an unlimited number of classes for their Sunday night shows, instead focusing on four classes which makes things more manageable.
And even though a goodly number of drivers are last minute arrivals on Sundays, they go ahead with their scheduled time lines, and leave it to the drivers and crews to make sure they are ready to race when the car is made. Sunday the warmups were completed and the first race hit the track at six twenty nine p.m. All the preliminaries were completed in forty minutes. Officials found off the tendency that many do to then take a copious break before starting the main events.
In just a few minutes the features were called and to make things move even better than perhaps normal, three of the four features ran nonstop with the last sixty laps of the night going green to checkered.
At eight twenty eight it was still seventy degrees, I was rolling down the road and when I got home it was again forty eight degrees with the rain temporary halted. I always figure if I can get home and hit the sack before bar closing time I'm doing well and such was the case on Sunday. I guarantee you this, no race fan every walked out of a track after a quick show and complained that they got done too early! However, a lot of people have walked out of tracks after a long night and said they wouldn't do that again.
Dubuque is now two weeks into their 2016 racing season and toward the end of the night I finally started to see the Dubuque Speedway start to show some of the characteristics that have made it one of my favorite tracks. Opening night it was strictly a "hug the rail" track with the drivers quickly falling into a single file pattern. Finally, in the Late Model feature we started to see the drivers move around on the track more and utilize the higher line. And not surprisingly, the driver that opened things up was none other than Jason Rauen, a driver known for his rim riding expertise, no matter where he might be racing.
However, Sunday he really started to open up the track by moving up the banking and when he was joined by Joel Callahan, the two of them really helped clean off the upper groove. While Rauen was never able to track down Luke Merfeld who got off to a big lead right from the green, Callahan was able to gain quite a few spots from his nine starting position.
This Sunday the big tires were only one lane off the guard rail and once the show started, they weren't touched after that. Hopefully the pattern of more multi groove racing continues as with the MLRA coming in soon, if the track is capable of handling them, these big horsepower Late Models will put on a dandy show.
To be fair, Sport Mod driver Tyler Soppe has passed a lot of cars for his back to back feature wins including this night when he started tenth for his win. However, it should also be noted that many of the cars he did pass were right at the start or following caution flags when the field was doubled up and jumping to the second groove to make passes is somewhat easier.
Before the races Sunday, I had the opportunity to talk to rookie Modified driver Bryce Garnhart for a few minutes. Coming off a very successful year in the Sport Mods last year, he told me that he and his team felt it was the right time to move up and while he has found the competition to be tough, he has been pleased at how much more professionally the Modified drivers have raced him to this point. He has raced at several different tracks already this year, and living across the border in Illinois, most of his trips are rather long ones to the track. Sunday saw him start ninth in the main event and finish up seventh.
Thanks as usual to all the folks at SPI for a good night of racing run in a most professional manner.
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