I'm baaack! Actually, I didn't go anywhere. However, the last couple of weeks have found me chasing racing closer to home primarily, as many of the tracks in my local area are now up and running. For instance, last weekend I enjoyed a nice three day weekend of good racing at three tracks, all within an hour of the home base, while folks down here in Iowa watched it rain all weekend. Sometimes, you just get lucky and end up on the good side of a lingering low pressure area. All we had was sun and a lot of wind out of the North and while it wasn't the most pleasant, racing did continue as planned.
For those that might be interested in checking out where I go racing when I don't appear on this blog, try logging on to WISSOTA.org or if you're like me and still prefer to get your racing news by actually holding a race paper in your hands, you might consider a subscription to ALL THE DIRT Racing News, one of the few racing papers still left in existence. ATD covers all the WISSOTA tracks which right now is somewhere upwards of sixty in the upper Midwest.
I can remember a time when I used to get about six or seven race papers weekly from all over the country and now most of them have gone the way of the buffalo. The only other paper I still get is Area Auto Racing News, an excellent paper out of Trenton New Jersey that covers the eastern half of the country. That, and along with about six or so monthly or bimonthly magazines.
The reemergence of myself in the Hawkeye State was caused by a two night stand that would start on Wednesday, May 4th with the weekly show at the Southern Iowa Speedway. However, along with the weekly classes, the Sprint Invaders were making their second run of the year after having their opener almost a month ago at Thirty Four Raceway.
And boy, did we have Wednesday's race covered! A majority of the bloggers for Positively Racing were on hand at the track Wednesday, including our mentor Jeff Broeg who was sharing the Sprint Invaders microphone with Bill Wright as well as regular track announcer Tony Paris. So, first of all, we should all give a thanks to promoter Mike VanGenderen for giving up the opportunity to blog about Wednesday's race. Many promoters would balk at having so many people from the same source covering an event but Mike seems to be from that rare breed that likes having as much coverage as he can get. And of course, when you're the only show in town, it does make it easier to have multiple people on board. So our task then is cover the race as fairly as possible, give credit where it is due and perhaps, if necessary, point out a few things that could be done just a little bit different to make the race more enjoyable for the fans.
Despite the bright sun shining, the darn wind was still blowing a gale and of course, right into the grandstand and while it finally did lay down after sunset, it still made for a cool night. However, after two straight rain outs, there were plenty of people from southern Iowa anxious to see racing and a nice sized crowd was in the stands for the early May midweek show.
Osky, in my mind, has always hung their hat on the fact that they offer a strong, five division program every Wednesday night, and despite the fact that they occasionally bring in special events to add to the show, the heart and soul of their racing at the Mahaska County Fairgrounds has always been their weekly divisions. And what I saw Wednesday given me much optimism that this philosophy is strong and perhaps even getting stronger. Last year, the five basic classes struggled on a number of occasions drawing enough race cars to field a good show. Wednesday night there were strong numbers in most classes and while the Stock Cars and Sport Mods were a little bit lower than I might have expected, they still drew enough cars to field two heats. What was most promising was that the Modifieds, Hobby Stocks and Sport Compacts all have very nice fields. When I was at Osky last year, a couple times they didn't have enough cars for two Modified heats, but there was a strong field of cars on had this Wednesday with not only good numbers but very good cars as well. The same thing could be said for the Hobbys and Sport Compacts.
And the best racing of the night was in the Hobby Stock and Stock Car features. Both races had great side by side battles for the lead and not just two cars, but multiples that kept switching up the top spots. And between the two races, there was only one yellow flag. Dustin Griffiths won the Hobby Stock and Cayden Carter came from the fourth row to surprise the two earlier leaders and drive by both of them to win the Stock Cars.
Curtis VanDerWal is another who came from the fourth row to win the Sport Mod main event. In another nonstop race, he dominated as he drove past car after car to win relatively easily. In the past couple of years, he seems by far to be the most dominant driver in any class here at Osky.
Cody Van Dusen was congratulated as the Sport Compact winner and collected the accolades. Later, however, in the official finish he was noted as being disqualified for an unspecified violation and Jake Benischek was awarded the win.
It would appear that the Modifieds have made a great turnaround in 2016 at Osky. Last year, quite frankly, there were a number of nights when the field was both small and lacking strong competition. That was anything but the case on Wednesday. With both Tom Berry Jr and Ricky Thornton Jr spending their summer in Iowa chasing racing, that adds two pretty strong competitors to the field every week. Add Kelly Shryock who was on hand along with Zack VanderBeek who now has an IMCA car plus the Browns and several others and suddenly you have one strong field of competitors.
And following the lead of the rest of the night, the winner came from the fifth row in the from of Richie Gustin, driving a brand new Harris chassis for Shawn Ritter. While Carter, Shryock and Colt Mather were battling for the lead, Gustin moved in and drove by all of them with a very impressive performance for the win.
A couple of the visitors didn't have very good nights. Berry Jr was turned by another car into the front stretch rail and he suffered major damage, both front and rear, to his car. Thornton Jr got involved in another tie up between two cars and had to go tail back on the opening lap. He raced his way from last all the way up to the top five but apparently didn't make too many friends with his hard charging style. Another driver tried to turn him around during the race, but missed, but later didn't as there was a post race collision on the front stretch that somehow missed the attention of track officials.
The featured attraction of the night, the Sprint Invaders, proved to be a bit of a dud. Not that they didn't bring a nice field of cars, as they did with twenty one of them on hand. And they did provide some traveling names too in the person of Wayne Johnson and Ricky Montgomery. But four of the five races they ran saw the winner start right on the front row and there just wasn't a lot of passing or side by side racing all night, in much contrast to the rest of the show. When John Schulz opted to go to the tail of the Sprint Car feature field and that put Terry McCarl on the pole, it was a foregone conclusion who would win. The question was, just how many cars would he lap during the twenty five laps of the main, and the answer was, a lot!
There was one wild crash when Montgomery got into the first turn rail and did a wild somersault that fortunately resulted in no injuries. However, he did tear the guardrail up and the only delay of the entire night was to repair the fence. The big surprise to me was that with the "Capital of Sprint Car Racing" only twenty miles to the West of Osky, I would have thought there would have been more of the winged fans on hand to watch the show, but it seemed to me that the crowd was mostly made up of regulars, with very few people on hand just to catch the Sprints.
Just when you think you've seen it all, something happens that causes you to just shake your head and marvel. The program Wednesday started off with the two Sport Compact heat races. However, Hobby Stock driver Scott Shull, tagged the field in the first heat, laying back to get some hot laps. The green came out and the race started. Shull laid back and then gave his car the gas. Unfortunately, he over shoot the second corner, went flying off the track and managed to roll his car over one and a half times, triggering the red flag and causing his car to have to be removed on the wrecker! I don't think I've ever seen such a thing happen before. The policy of allowing cars to come out and hot lap at the back of other division fields is one that is not done at all at home, and something that I had to get used to when I first started coming to races in Iowa. Wednesday it was a big Oops for Shull. He did, by the way, get the car fixed for the feature race where he ended up mid pack.
The show did get done a little later than most do here at Osky but that was largely because of the necessary fence repairs after the Sprint Car crash. The track Wednesday was black and slick but cars were racing in various grooves and it certainly wasn't hard to pass on, and that is the final and most important litmus test for any track.
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