Saturday, November 5, 2016

Chisholm Trail Showdown Begins at 81 Speedway

The weather was spectacular all weekend, particularly for the first weekend of November. Who could possibly sit home all weekend and not take advantage of the great conditions, knowing that the "other show" will drop eventually and we will be paying for the fantastic weather we are currently enjoying.

With that in mind, along with other appealing considerations, off I headed for the great state of Kansas and in particular, the 81 Speedway in Park City for the first annual Chisholm Trail Showdown. Originally scheduled to be a three day show using the same format that Humboldt uses for their Spring show, as the race date drew near the program was altered and cut to a two day show with double heat races on Friday and the mains on Saturday. Along with that, a full show for the B Mods would be held each night.

Since the plans were already laid, I did go ahead although I was disappointed that the program would be pared by one day, as were many of the drivers that I talked to, especially those from farther away.

One of the appealing parts of the trip was a chance to again visit the 81 Speedway, a track that I have not been to in what I would estimate to be at least thirty years! My last trip to 81 had to have been back in the eighties where I saw a two day show in April that featured afternoon racing both days for the Sprint Cars and I remember that after the show on Saturday, I ducked down to Enid Oklahoma for their Saturday night show. It's been so long that I hardly even remembered anything about the track.It's been there a long time though, and while it is a nice facility overall, it is starting to show its age in certain areas.

81 is about a three eighths mile paperclip shaped track that is wide in the turns but doesn't have too much banking. When it optimum racing condition, it does provide multiple grooves in the corners. It has a brown dirt surface that generally slicked up but on the opening night of this show they had over watered it and it was pretty "hammer down" for the first round of heat races, after which it dried out and raced remarkably different for the second round of heats.

I was told that the ample grandstands held over 4,000 people and the seating has a nice pitch, so that virtually every seat in the house is a good one, even with some of the lower trailers pitted in the infield. One of the changes that have been made in the years since I was last here was that the majority of the pits have been moved outside the back chute. Musco lights were added about a dozen years ago and it is well lit, including the grandstand seating area.

The sound system is excellent and the announcers can be heard over the roar of the cars. One of the nice things they do here is they have a roving announcer in the infield who quickly interviews each race winner. I was very impressed with the quality of their announcers as a whole. I don't know that I have ever had the pleasure of hearing track announcer Warren Hardy before but he would have to go down as one of the top "voices" anywhere. He is knowledgeable, funny, informed and has a great voice.

The race cars were pretty slow to arrive on Friday afternoon and I was starting to get worried that this show was going to be a "bust." However, lots of late arriving rigs put the worst of my fears to rest and when the racing began, there were forty five Modifieds and thirty five B Mods on hand to race. However, while this was enough for the two day show, likely it wouldn't have flown if there were an extra day included and the lack of pre entries was probably the biggest reason that the show was cut by one day and the ten grand to win event moved to next April. It wasn't however, due to lack of a crowd in the stands and the number of people on hand had to have been one of the largest ones I've seen anywhere for what was essentially a B Mod show plus some Modified heats. However, I've always heard that Wichita is a good racing town with lots of  cars and fans and the great weather certainly didn't hurt.

I did have a brief chance to talk to USMTS head Todd Staley in the pits before the show and he revealed that next year's schedule would likely be around sixty events. He's actively trying to reduce the schedule to that number, feeling that he has been running his drivers ragged the last couple of years and while the 2016 schedule probably ended up with about that many races, he also had about twenty rain outs, some of which they didn't mourn when they happened.

Don't expect much in the way of rule changes for 2017 and the new schedule should be revealed at the Harlan trade show upcoming, although there will still be some events that will need to be plugged into the preliminary schedule. The season will start out with an extended visit to the South, with races in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and possibly Mississippi before they come North for the Spring.

This race was "hyped" as a challenge race between the USMTS and the NCRA Modifieds and took place at the home track of C. Ray Hall's NCRA. There were eight of the top ten drivers in NCRA points on hand while only four of the top ten in Central Region points of the USMTS were in the pits, although Ryan Gustin was on hand to drive the award winning car of Jason Hughes. I guess this is proof that even with great weather, there does eventually get a point where some drivers have just had enough for the year.

Things eventually worked out to be pretty even between the two groups as the ten heat races were split equally between the two sanctioning groups and there were seven USMTS drivers versus five NCRA'ers that made the top twelve for the feature. One must also consider that the NCRA group does have the home track advantage too but the USMTS group is used to taking on the best of the locals at wherever they race. The only double heat race winner was Rodney Sanders and he will start on the pole for the fifty two lap, five grand to win show on Saturday night.

While the Modified portion of the show was billed as a showdown between sanctioning bodies, it reality the B Mod portion of the program was the same. Incredibly, with all the Modifieds they have racing at their weekly shows, 81 Speedway does not have a B Mod class. As it was explained to me, they have three different "levels" of Modifieds racing at 81, almost like the different levels of baseball teams. While the rules for each level are the same, drivers designate which "group" they are going to race at during the season. They have the "rookies" which is reserved for drivers that have never won a championship, the "AAA" for those moving up and the NCRA Mods for those at the top of their game. However, they have no B Mod class, something that several drivers I talked with wished that they had.

So, the B Mod portion of the program was left to see how many IMCA Sport Mods from northern Kansas and Oklahoma would show up and the B Mods would be drivers from eastern Kansas and the Kansas City area. So it was quite impressive when thirty five of them appeared and many of the spectators on hand were quite surprised to see as many as they had. Drivers from Missouri and Kansas helped to fill out the field and Jackson Hale and family came all the way from Minnesota.

IMCA Sport Mods won three of the four heats while splitting the two B features with the B Mods. The top two finishers in the main were also Sport Mods. Ryan Gustin, driving one of the McCartney entries, a big sponsor on his former Modified team, came from the fourth row to win the six hundred dollar victory. Travis Johnson, who won a B feature, stormed up from the thirteenth starting spot to finish a strong second just ahead of the first B Mod driven by Missouri veteran Steve Muilenburg. The B Mods put on a good show with only two yellow flags in their twenty lap main and only three starters that didn't complete the distance. I will bite my tongue while not commenting on what Gustin was doing driving a B Mod in this show.

One of the top runners in this class was eliminated early when Mike Roach blew a motor during his heat race. There were several motors that went up in smoke early as the track was pulling very hard.

I wanted to give a special word to a couple of drivers that towed all the way from South Dakota for this event. WISSOTA drivers Arne Anderson and Duke Erickson came from Watertown and Sioux Falls respectively, and neither was anxious to wrap up their racing seasons so they hooked up and towed out here, both with open trailers and both by themselves. Anderson has his own construction company and has been racing the most of his eight years in the Modifieds this year, as I have seen him race several times in the past few weeks at events in Minnesota. Erickson is a Modified rookie, having raced motocross motorcycles until he grew tired of healing up from injuries! He also has traveled a lot in his first year of racing, running regularly in Aberdeen and Watertown South Dakota as well as Madison Minnesota.

I also had a chance to talk with Johnny Allen in the pits before the show. He is on hand, working with his many customers as well as working on the B Mod of his son Dylan. Dylan is a college student in Springfield Missouri so hasn't had the chance to race too much this year. He will be graduating next Spring with a degree in Marketing and is anxious to join the working world. Meanwhile, he plans to race when he can and spectate also. Johnny admits that he misses racing and is entertaining the thought of perhaps getting back behind the wheel but his business interests and the desires of his racing sons now come first.

There were very few yellow flags and most of them were for minor spins as it was a very smooth night of racing with the final checkered flag waving before 10 pm as there was not a single event that had more than two yellows.

Perhaps the most hard luck victim of the entire night was Shaun Peterson who towed all the way from Alexandria Minnesota to race his Mod. He was running well in his first heat race, having passed a few cars which is always important at one of these passing points races when another car spun in front of him. He clipped the car and damaged  his right front and as he went down the back chute, the entire right front hub broke and the wheel exited the car. The runaway wheel got some incredible height, bounced over the fence that surrounds the track and out on to the busy street that borders the track. I'm not sure where, or if , they found the wheel but the neighbors live right across the street from the track and they might have gotten a souvenir from the evening's racing. The damage was too severed for Peterson to fix quickly and he missed the second round of heats, thus insuring that his starting spot for action on Saturday is going to be dismal. 

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