After being away from Positively Racing for awhile as I have been busy doing some WISSOTA racing, I slipped quietly back into the Hawkeye State for a race on Tuesday, June 14th as both the Deery Brothers Summer Series and Hawkeye Dirt Tour played a visit to the West Liberty Raceway.
It was an incredibly steamy Tuesday night and ridiculously different than when I left home about six hours earlier. The forecast was grim but the sun was shining at West Liberty and the program was a go.
Of course, this was great news for the race fans but the worst possible scenario for event promoter Keith Simmons. Most causal fans are going to believe the weather forecast and if they don't want to get caught out in a storm, they stay home. Only the hardcore fans show on a night like this and that was later reflected in the size of the crowd, much smaller than one would imagine for the combination of two great racing series. By, like true troopers, the motto of the night was "the show must go on" and so the racers and track workers prepared for what was likely to be an entertaining and hopefully, quick show so as to beat the weather and get those fans nice enough to come out home early and ready for work on Wednesday morning.
The car counts were OK with twenty seven Late Models and twenty three Modifieds signing in to race but on a night like this, if you were some distance from the track and not locked up in a point battle, you might also consider leaving the car at home on the trailer rather than pull a distance, only to get wet. However, while the numbers might not have been overwhelming, the real race fans recognized that the quality of the field was top notch in both divisions.
The hoped for scintillating finishes were not to be in the cards on Tuesday either as dominating performances by Justin Kay and Chris Abelson made the question of who was going to win the feature races a mode point.
In the Late Models, Kay was very strong from start to finish and after dogging Denny Eckrich for seventeen laps, he made a dandy move as the two leaders were trying to skirt through lapped traffic. Catching Eckrich off turn two and temporarily out of the groove, Kay blasted past the former leader and then proceeded to march away from the field. Kay withstood a yellow shortly after and then, with the last twenty laps of the race going nonstop, he eased away from the rest of the pack. Kay was driving the car that Brian Birkhofer had driven during his brief return from retirement, a return that has apparently ended, perhaps this time for good. The car still sported the colors that Birkhofer ran and a "K" was simply taped over the "B" on the side of the car. No matter the number or color, the car was clearly the class of the field.
It was a one, two sweep for teammates as Scott Fitzpatrick finished a strong second. The best race during the last twenty laps was between Kevin Kile and Tyler Droste for fourth with Droste prevailing right at the end.
In fact, a double win was in the cards for Kay as he had a big lead in the Modified main and appeared to just be cruising until the motor starting "laying down" and he shut the car down to try and save the engine at the same time a pileup involving Kyle Brown and Derrick Walker brought out the yellow and then red flags as it took some time to separate the two.
After that, Abelson inherited the lead and drove away without much of a challenge from anyone in the last sixteen laps. Kelly Shyock was the man on the move as he drove up from sixteenth to finish third. Abelson deserved the win if for no other reason than showing the determination to tow all the way across the state with the grim forecast being blasted out from all media. As it turned out, the storms started to threaten the last half of the Late Model feature, with the wind quickening and the skies turning ominous. However, all action was completed and everyone should have been safely tucked in their vehicles before the rain hit West Liberty.
The evening got off to a shaky start for Andy Eckrich who hit a dip in turn one and tore the right rear wheel off his Late Model. However, he made the necessary repairs in time and ended up the evening finishing seventh in the Late Model main.
It was also a tough night for Deery Brothers points leader Jeff Aikey who just didn't seem to have the necessary speed on this night. Late in the race he suffered the indignity of being lapped and his seventeenth place finish was not at all what you would expect of him.
Also taking a hit was point contender in the HDT Series, Brian Irvine. Pulling down from Northeast Iowa, he was hoping for a good night to stay right with the point leaders, but his motor went South and he was the only Modified to scratch out of the main event.
SPI is known for their speedily run midweek shows and everyone was hoping for another on Tuesday. However, with a couple of time consuming wrecks that needed to be cleared, the show didn't feature the brevity of some. Still, the final checkered flag wave just before 10 p.m. which wasn't bad at all, and all were grateful to have beat the weather. At 4:10 a.m, I walked in the front door of the house, another night at the races completed.
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