Adams Doubles at East Bay

Thursday night, February 9th, it was night two of the Sunshine State Mod Tour contested at the East Bay Raceway Park. The two drivers that had been battling for supremacy in this series so far went at it again and on Thursday it was a clear decision win for Wisconsin's Kevin Adams. Not only did he pass Kyle Strickler for the lead in the Modified feature and then go on for the win, he doubled up as he won his fourth B Mod main event of the five contested so far between here and North Florida Speedway in Lake City earlier this week while also setting quick time for the Modifieds too. 

The car count was up slightly in both classes on Thursday with several new entrants arriving. There were fifty four Modifieds on hand to race on Thursday. SSMT officials like to count every car that has been on the grounds among their entrants so their numbers don't jive with mine, but in reality there were fifty four cars on hand ready to race. Among the most significant new entrants was Kentucky's Tyler Nicely and Michigan's Kory Maurice.

The B Mods finally got enough cars on hand that they were able to run to heat races which was a first for here at East Bay.

Speaking of the B Mods, there was a bit of a brouhaha over rules in this class before the show. For the first time, they were called for a technical inspection before racing began and there was much talk about about the various rules packages that they were trying to combine for this series. The most evident change was with the car of Adams, who was forced to remove the spoiler from his B Mod and run it like his Mod sans any kind of spoiler.

The track was totally different on Thursday than it had been for Wednesday night's show and that produced some scrambling among the drivers. While the track always seems to be heavy and high side dominant for the time trials, Thursday night it really dried out and both feature races saw the field hugging the inside berm almost exclusively except for the outstanding outside pass by Adams over Strickler in the early going of the Modified main.

This series has been spiced up as for many it has become seen as a battle between the "open" motors and the crate engine cars. Of course, with Strickler running a crate and being very strong to this point of the series, this just further added fuel to the fires. And with crates not being allowed to run with UMP Modifieds anywhere but here in Florida, that has set some of the UMP faithful on edge. Adams proclamation in victory lane that he was happy to prove that you didn't need a "Mexican built motor" to win the races drew quite a hoot from the fans left in the grandstand and was likely fueled in part by the fact that the #40 racing team doesn't take likely to crate motors since Adams' father Dave is a prominent engine builder back in Wisconsin where the motor builders now put together "shop built" concept motors to fight the crate invasion.

What most people didn't know however as that Jeff Mathews, a multi time track champion at East Bay in both Modifieds and Late Models, decided that after a miserable outing on Wednesday that he would rather switch than fight, went out and bought a crate motor on Thursday and installed it in his car for tonight's racing. Was it a coincidence that Mathews suddenly caught fire and finished a strong second to Adams after passing Ashley Newman on the last corner? On a dry track like it was on Thursday, I believe that big blade that the crates are allowed to run makes a huge difference.

Minus his spoiler, Adams had a tough time holding off a strong running Jason Garver in the B Mod feature but he held on to get his fourth win in five nights.

It appeared that the Mods would all be hugging the bottom groove for their main event but Adams surprised everyone by going to the top side from his second row position and after building up some momentum, he was able to drive past Strickler for the lead. When Strickler finally gave up on the bottom and moved up to the high side where Adams was running, it was apparent that he was just a bit off in his setup on this night as Adams was clearly the fastest car on the track.

Near mid race, the top side started slowing down and Adams dropped to the bottom, hugging the inside line where everyone else had dropped to. Strickler dropped out with mechanical issues and Mathews continued to dig his way forward from the fourth row. A couple late cautions bunched the field but Adams was strong on each restart to pull away. David Reutimann made a big charge from deep in the field to finish in the top five, and with the changing track conditions, it will be interesting to see how everyone tries to keep up with the track the coming two nights.

Even though the program on Wednesday was a smooth running one with good racing, the crowd tonight seemed a bit smaller to me. My guess was that some of the traveling race fans in the area might have decided to venture up to Bubba tonight to catch Tony Stewart and the winged Sprints in action.

Tonight also marked the first big crash of the week so far. Devin Dixon jumped a wheel on a restart and was launched into the catch fence on the front chute. He was OK but a lengthy period of time was needed to get a torch and do some fence fixing. This made tonight's show run well over an hour later than last night and it did start to get quite cool. Dixon does have a back up car so hopefully we will see him back in racing action on Friday.