The United States Modified Touring Series has been battling the weather a lot this year. Twice this week already they have been rained out of their scheduled events. As they move farther North for a show in Minnesota and then over into Wisconsin before they head to their second mega event of the 2016 racing racing season at the I-94 Speedway in Fergus Falls Mn next week, the weather has finally started to improve for them.
Thursday the cars were finally out of the trailers and racing took place at the KRA Speedway in Willmar Minnesota, for an appearance at this track for the second straight year. Last year's initial appearance here was a big hit so a follow up performance was in the cards. On a beautiful early Summer day, a nice crowd was on hand to watch the USMTS in action along with three WISSOTA sanctioned classes and the local Hobby Stocks.
KRA Speedway is a fairgrounds track, sitting smack dab in a residential, North side neighborhood in Willmar and virtually surrounded on all sides by lakes. The land the fairgrounds sits on is prime residential property and would be worth a mint to a developer. In fact, several times there have been pushes to move the fairgrounds out into the country North of town and turn the existing fairgrounds into a housing development. Trust me when I say that the some of the lakeside property on the fairgrounds would be worth millions to a realtor but so far, the move hasn't been accomplished. The fairgrounds is a historic one, and there are a group of people that have been fighting to keep it where it currently is. The racetrack actually sits in a low spot of the fairgrounds and was a water passage between two lakes that butt up against the fairgrounds. The track actually sits at a lower elevation than either of the lakes so when it rains, the track and pits get wet easily and are slow to dry. In fact, even on Thursday, with rain earlier in the week the pits were quite muddy as was the low groove on the race track and most of the day was spent dragging both so they would dry out.
KRA is a club run facility that has gone through both good and tough times, as most club run facilities have. They have had a pretty good relationship with the city of Willmar but that fluctuates with who is running the board that directs the track and with so many houses and businesses close to the track, there is always pressure on the city to shut down those infernal noisy, smoky, dust producing race cars that disturb the quiet Thursday nights. The track is on a tight curfew and because the that, they must start their race programs promptly at 6:30 p.m in order to ensure that they are done by curfew which I believe is now 10:30 p.m.
KRA has been embroiled in a battle this Spring with a driver that has brought nothing but negative publicity to the track and has led to some drivers informally boycotting the track. The battle has been waged against Tim Johnson of Brainerd Minnesota. Johnson, an accomplished racer and regular at the track the last couple of years, races cars in three classes at the track. He runs Modifieds, Super Stocks and Street Stocks. He is a big winner in all three classes and totaled over one hundred feature wins between the three cars last year, an impressive statistic that the national racing media completely missed.
Apparently there are some on the board, or are connected to members of the board, that didn't like him racing in three classes. They got the board to issue a rule that would not allow Johnson to race his Street Stock at the track. With all three classes being under WISSOTA sanctioning, this immediately got the sanctioning body involved. They ruled that while any track can refuse entry of a driver to their facility, they are not allowed to mandate what classes a driver can, or can not race in. It simply wasn't legal. KRA didn't like this and I understand that the sanctioning body and the track aren't on the best of terms because of this decision.
But the board at KRA wasn't done yet. They really didn't want Johnson to race his Street at their track so they tried a different way of banning him. What they did was come up with a ridiculously scaled entry fee for drivers racing in multiple classes. If you race in one class, it costs thirty dollars to entry the night's racing. Two classes costs ninety dollars and for Johnson, who routinely races in three classes at the track, the entry fee each night is three hundred and forty dollars! Where they came up with these figures, no one seems to know. Four classes costs five hundred and ninety dollars and five classes costs a whopping eight hundred and forty dollars, just to enter the cars for one night!
Well, what they thought they had done, turned around to back fire in their faces. Johnson's car owner, Ernie Wollak, a well heeled construction company owner in St. Cloud Minnesota and a bit of a rogue himself, accepted the challenge they threw at him. Johnson has been running three cars at KRA, including the most inflammatory of the three, the Street Stock, weekly. Wollak has stated that he is willing to pay the exorbitant entry fee, just to "rub it in the faces" of those that tried to arbitrarily ban his driver.
Johnson has been winning with regularity again this year. In fact, he won the Street feature on this night and is approaching twenty feature wins on the season already and led for the first half of the USMTS Modified main, with his WISSOTA legal Modified before settling for third, but that is another story.
KRA has gained some additional money from the Wollak Team, due to their high entry fees but has more than offset this by the amount of negative publicity the move has generated. And there are a high number of drivers in central Minnesota that race in multiple classes and many of them, former regulars at the track, have mostly stayed away from KRA this year due to their new ruling on entry fees.
Both Johnson and Wollak have lots of connections in central Minnesota and there has been talk that they might line up rides for Johnson in two of the other sanctioned classes at the track that Johnson doesn't currently have cars for, the Midwest Modifieds and the Mod Fours and show up some night to race in all five classes! Now if the board would accept that they made a mistake and promote an event like this correctly , I could see it being a huge attraction that would pack the place. "See if Tim Johnson Can Win All Five Feature Races This Thursday Night," could be a gigantic event but it will probably never happen because some people's stubbornness is only matched by their lack of creativity.
However, I digress and we should move on to the evening's main event, the USMTS Modifieds who on this night had issues of their own.
The aforementioned Johnson started on the pole for the USMTS Mod feature and took the early lead after a brief battle with Jake Timm. Johnson was flying and built up a big lead as Timm fought to hold off a charging Jason Hughes, who has started in row four. They were having an excellent battle for second but Johnson was getting away from both of them, as he worked through lapped traffic easily and extended his lead.
The first yellow flew on lap twenty for a stalled Jesse Sobbing, who had reported to me earlier in the evening that for one of the few times this year, he was not running a crate engine in his car on this night.
Johnson again built up a big lead on the restart while Timm and Hughes continued to battle for second. That's when things got sticky. Johnson had nearly a straightaway lead and without a yellow, I don't think there was a chance that anyone would have caught him. Hughes desperately needed another yellow but who could have guessed that he would trigger it and then use it to his advantage!
As Timm and Hughes battled for second, they raced hard into turn three. Timm had the advantage and as they raced hard into the corner, Hughes clipped the left rear of Timm and turned him around after which he spun up to the wall, triggering the yellow.
The cars idled around the track for several laps, after which the call was made to send Timm to the back while Hughes maintained second. This set off quite a series of "eye rolling" in the stands as most everyone had seen Hughes, while certainly not intentionally, but nevertheless he had clearly clipped Timm and Jake would not have spun except for "the help" he received from Hughes. Timm balked but reluctantly went to the tail,and soon pulled off after the green reappeared.
I don't think anyone in the crowd, knowing how USMTS realigns their races, would expect Timm to be restored to second. However, I have seen on many occasions when contact caused a yellow that both drivers would be sent to the tail and I fully felt that was the proper call in this case. But, for whatever reason, it wasn't done in this case. Of course, the conspiracy advocates will immediately look at the fact that Hughes is a USMTS regular and the region point leader and draw their own conclusion. I would prefer to believe that someone just missed the call, but I have to admit it was about as open and shut case as one could ever see, and I wonder.
Jake's father is Bob Timm, who owns and operates the Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Fountain City Wisconsin, a track that runs primarily USRA rules including USRA Modifieds. I would expect that he and Todd Staley probably had a long discussion on this call.
On the restart and with his big lead gone and perhaps his tires also, Johnson just couldn't keep up the pace running the cushion and after a few laps, Hughes drove under him for the lead and then gradually pulled away. On the last couple of laps, Rodney Sanders also got past Johnson for second. Area racer Jason Thoeness had a great run for fourth with southern Minnesota youngster Jacob Bleess rounding out the top five. Justin Oestreich, in another WISSOTA legal car, also finished in the top ten.
I did notice that the official press release for the event completely avoided the issue and just stated that Hughes moved from third to first following a lap twenty seven yellow. No explanation was made of what caused the yellow or any of the circumstances. It was a particularly puzzling event in what is usually a rock solid series.
Staley did note earlier that he is hoping for seventy cars for the first annual Summer Sota at I-94 next week, an event paying fifteen grand to the winner in what will be the biggest event so far at I-94 as this event replaces the typical midsummer special hosted by Deer Creek Speedway. Tickets are still available for this race.
No comments:
Post a Comment