For quite a number of years in a row, this has been the weekend that we have had the pleasure of attending the Duel in the Desert at the Dirt Track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. But for issues having to do with vacation time, this race was not an option this year for us. While we will miss the excitement of Vegas and seeing friends that we have made over the years and often only see in Vegas, life goes on.
However, that does not necessarily mean that I'm just going to lie down whimpering in the corner and let the weekend pass without seeing any kind of motorsports activity, especially so with the outstanding weather that we have been experiencing for the past few weeks.
Twenty five years ago or so, I had a friend that was attending optometry school in Memphis Tennessee. Being a big race fan, he sought out to attend races in that area and one of the tracks that he found and often raved about was the Riverside International Speedway in West Memphis Arkansas, just across the Mississippi River from Memphis. Known as "The Ditch", RIS has long been known for its racy surface and great action, particularly in the Sprint Cars which are the "bread and butter" of this area. With drivers such as the Swindell brothers, the Hoods and many others from this area, a long and rich racing tradition holds out at RIS, where these drivers and many others got their racing start at a track that has been running continuously since 1949.
In recent years, the United Sprint Car Series(USCS) has wrapped up their season the second week in November with a big two day show at RIS. And for seven years, this special event has been highlighted by the "Flip Flop 50", a two feature event program that splits the feature into twenty five lap segments with the field completely inverted for the second twenty five laps based on the finish of the first twenty five. Both features have a generous payoff and there is also a bonus offered if one driver can win the first feature, go to the tail for the second main and win that one also. In seven years that has not happened so far with Tim Crawley the closest as he managed to get up to third in the second main.
USCS is a major sanctioning body in this region and this is the last race on their long season schedule. Being the final point race, there is also extra drama with a championship in the 360 Sprint Cars to be decided this weekend. Team mates Terry Gray and Morgan Turpen are separated by only five points entering the weekend's events, and by Saturday night one of them will be crowned the USCS point champion. USCS also sanctions a Modified division where Troy Dow has a big lead in the points and is just waiting for the mere formality of the racing to conclude before he is crowned. USCS also announced this weekend that they will be sanctioning a Crate Late Model division next year too.
The format of the weekend will see 360 Sprint Cars run qualifying heats on Friday(no time trials, thank you) and a dash for the top point cars that will set their starting lineups for Saturday. The Modifieds will run a full show both on Friday and Saturday. Late Models will have heats as well as the Street Stocks plus a dash. The USCS also has a 600 Sprint Car series that will run a full show both Friday and Saturday. While I don't keep track of the 600 Sprints, I can tell you that there were about thirty of them on hand and that Joe B. Miller, who also runs Midgets and Sprint Cars, won their feature on Friday. They also had about one yellow for each of the cars on hand in their main event!
At first glance, RIS reminds me of many of the "bullrings" you might attend in Illinois. It is a quarter mile, high banked track featuring their bragging product, Mississippi River "gumbo" as the surface. They prepare it in a very unusual way as they put some water on it early and then just let it sit. When the cars come out to roll it in, it looks dry and you expect the dust to fly. However, the moisture comes right up and I can say that I didn't see a whisper of dust all night. It didn't have the "hammer down" aspect to it on this night that I might have expected but instead really slicked up but the surface is wide and provides a lot of different grooves and there was plenty of side by side racing all night.
The track has good lighting, and a big grandstand on both the front and back chute. The grandstand was built correctly and has a really steep pitch which makes it tough to clamber up and down but provides excellent sight lines. The sound system is strong enough to knock you right out of the grandstand and a small scoreboard at the end of the front chute does its job.
The pits start almost directly behind the main grandstand and wraps all the way around the track with extra space roped off in the parking lot for this weekend's big field of cars as the pits aren't very big. The spectator parking lots are cramped and small, again reminding me of some Illinois ovals and the main parking lot is shared with the West Memphis VFW, which makes it handy for the spectators to walk next door and have a "cool one or two" before the announcer calls the cars out to wheel pack, at which time they exit the VFW and walk over to the track. If you didn't know exactly where the track was located, you might not even see if when you drove by as there is no sign of any kind identifying where the track is.
Car counts were twenty eight in the Sprints, eighteen in the Late Models, thirty five in the Modifieds and twenty three in the Streets along with the previously mentioned thirty plus in the 600 Sprints.
Heat races were entertaining in all the classes and while the Sprints respected each other, the other classes drove like it was the last race of the year. By that, I mean that they were super aggressive and there was almost an untold amount of smashing and bashing. But it made for spectacular racing.
The Sprint action identified Derek Hagar and Sammy Swindell as the drivers to beat. Swindell was driving the A.G. Rains car this weekend and among the "hired guns" on hand was Spencer Bayston in the Kevin Swindell entry. Among the most interesting of the entries was Ray Bugg, who the announcers said was retiring after this year. The interesting thing is that Ray is seventy eight years old!
The Street Stocks and the Crate Late Models were really rough on each other and there will be much thrashing on the cars on Saturday to get them ready to race for the main events. While the Late Models also have the option of running the same motor as the Street Stocks, it seemed that most of the Late Models were using the crate option and running the big ten inch blades on the back of the cars.
I thought the Modified field was the strongest from top to bottom and I think the number on hand caught track officials by surprise. There was no B feature on the schedule and they had to scramble to add a couple of them to qualify all the cars for the main. The Modified feature was, I thought, the best race of the night and also the cleanest with only two yellows in their twenty five lap main. Dow quickly came up from the third row and led most of the contest, although he was challenged by Ashley Newman for the lead in the late going. The Modified feature gave a preview of what to expect in the mains on Saturday as the lapped traffic was fearsome and I'm told that when the Sprints get into traffic, which comes quickly, the racing them truly gets wild.
The only down side of the opening night of racing was the late hour that the show concluded with the final checkered flag not waving until well after 1 am in the morning. Most of the spectators had found their way to the gates long before the race concluded on a cool night in November. While there were a lot of races run and a lot of yellows that couldn't be avoided, some blame must also go to the track and its operators as the hot laps moved at a "snail's pace" and the show started over an hour late, time that could have been better used later that night.
My request for credentials got buried in the USCS "spam mail" but just by dumb luck, the person I flagged down for help proved to be USCS PR person Wesley Outland who quickly cleared things up for me and was most helpful, along with RIS's Sherry Allen. Outland also shared the announcing duties with Nick Robbins of "Race On Texas" productions and they certainly kept everyone informed on what was going on.
Opening night was enlightening and I look forward to see how the program will play out on Saturday. Likely the only new cars on hand on Saturday might be some new Modifieds, as they have another full, completely separate program upcoming.
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