Round three of the Wild West Shootout took place on Wednesday, January 11th at the Arizona Raceway on the grounds of ET Motorsports Park in sunny Arizona.
The first midweek show of the extended series always produces a little bit of change over the rest of the series. Car counts can fluctuate considerably as some drivers leave and yet others just begin to arrive. The spectator counts also can be substantially different than those for the rest of the events while lastly, track conditions are often substantially different too for various reasons.
Car counts were down over the first two nights of racing except for the Modifieds where things turned out to be quite surprising. The Late Models lost ten cars over the opening Saturday with some of the California and New Mexico drivers heading home to work over the week. A couple cars were also lost to event ending crashes, the most disappointing being the loss of Ricky Thornton Jr to the local fans after his Sunday crash bent the frame in his new Black Diamond entry. Also for area fans, Nick O'Neill was missing after he hurt the motor in his car during the practice session on Tuesday night. That's right, if six nights of racing wasn't enough for you, there was also a voluntary session of practice on Tuesday night. Pay $200, and you could take all the laps you wanted!
After a couple of cars scratched out of Wednesday night's action when they had motor problems, a couple of the heats were a little skimpy on cars, a possible concern for upcoming events. Hopefully, those missing for the midweek show will return for next weekend.
Meanwhile, the Modified class pulled off a stunner. Instead of losing cars, additional cars rolled in for Wednesday and a two year high of the open wheel cars was on hand. In face, three more Modifieds arrived at once in a big rig all the way from the Winnipeg Manitoba area.
The X Mod field was down somewhat too but this is the class that has more variables, largely due to local entrants that have to work and can't always make it for the weeknight shows with the crazy Phoenix traffic patterns.
A couple drivers and crews were busy since Sunday as Justin Duty, who rolled his car, was back in action after a busy couple of days of work. His father John flew home to Oregon to work but Justin stayed and got his car ready. Unfortunately, he would tear the whole side of it off later in the evening.
South Dakota's Dustin Bluhm had a couple of trying days too. He flipped his Modified on Sunday. Actually, until after he flipped it, it was just a borrowed ride but when he wiped out the front end, he had to fix it and buy it! Then, to make matters worse, on Tuesday night he blew the motor on his X Mod and was forced to change that. He told me that so far this week, he figured he was down about twenty four grand so far! I only hope he stays away from the craps table with his current luck.
The drivers meeting brought some disturbing information. Co-promoter Chris Kearns delivered the news that there was a lady on hand from some governmental agency with a sound devise, checking to see if the track was exceeding whatever the decibel limits are. Apparently they have been receiving noise complaints from people living about a mile away from the track from the first weekend's action and of course, with Wednesday's show being the only truly midweek show, even more emphasis is being placed on this program. Kearns reminded everyone to make sure they had their mufflers on and also spoke to the fact that they were going to run off as speedy a show as possible. In that regard, when everyone was set to go, the races started which turned out to be fifteen minutes before the advertised starting time and the final checkered waved at 9:45 p.m.
With the rumblings that I had heard earlier about the neighbors not being enchanted with the race track, this is the kind of thing that could most put this series in jeopardy.
Race director Kelly Carlton reported that the tire samples were back from the weekend races and everyone passed "muster" with more samples to be taken on Wednesday night. They were also going to pull off rear tires from the winners to further do inspections based on complaints that they weren't teching enought.
With the later starting time on Wednesday, it made track prep again a changing experience. The sun was almost set by the time hot laps started and this made for a considerably different track than the previous two shows. It was slimy in the early going with a narrow groove and later on in the evening, for the first time all week the outside groove seemed to give up and most of the Late Models were right on the bottom. This played into Billy Moyers' hands as he doesn't like to bang the cushion any more and has always been a smooth runner on the bottom lane. He and Terry Phillips, two that had disappointing opening weekends, both "righted their ships" on Wednesday. For Phillips, the answer was to break out a new Black Diamond race car while for Moyer it was to make some changes on his car.
Joining Moyer in victory lane were Shawn Strong in the X Mods and Thornton Jr in the Modifieds. For Thornton Jr, it was his second win already this week while Strong has gotten better in each outing for him this week. Both of them got to the front quickly in their main events in what were relatively "ho hum" races. There was some battling in the Late Model feature before Moyer took over and the show in total wasn't quite as entertaining as the opening two were.
It was a trying night for Dustin Strand on Wednesday. He had just moved into second in the Mod feature when he spun in turn two all by himself. The same thing happened in the Late Model feature but in that event he got some help from a certain yellow and red car. Strand suffered damage but was able to limp home with a top ten finish while he was hoping for much more after pulling off the most scintillating move of the week on the opening lap of his Late Model heat.
While it feels like we have seen some good racing and much side by side battling, in three nights of racing we have yet to see a feature winner come from deeper than the second row of a main with six of the nine right off the front row.
While the crowd wasn't near as big as either of the previous two races, it was by far the biggest Wednesday night crowd I have ever seen for a Wild West Shootout at any location. The Wednesday night crowds at Tucson used to be very poor so this was a significant improvement. It looks like this event will be a huge success, as long as track promoters don't get thrown "out of Dodge" by the local powers that be.
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