On Sunday, March 19th, I made the long drive West to the Junction Motor Speedway in McCool Junction Nebraska for day number two of the Mike Chapin Memorial Spring Thaw.
It has been two years since I was last at JMS and there were some changes that have taken place since that last visit. For one, the track is now sanctioned by IMCA as it was a NASCAR sanctioned track back then. A more immediate change has been a restructuring of the race track that was new for this weekend for the first time. The track has been shortened with both ends of the track pulled in and this was the first race weekend since those changes were made. Finally, the Late Models, who I believe were non sanctioned previously, are now sanctioned by the NeSmith Racing Series which is a group that focuses on crate Late Model racing.
With all the surrounding tracks all sanctioned by IMCA, it was truly only a matter of time until JMS lined up with the other tracks to offer same sanctioning. The rules when it was NASCAR sanctioned were the same as they are now with the major change being that drivers no longer have to hold two licenses from different sanctioning bodies. The hope was that with JMS an IMCA track, car counts would improve. I believe that premise is still a work in progress.
As far as shortening the track, I asked track owner Delmar Friesen about that personally. He told me that drivers had repeatedly spoken to him about the fact that the track needed to be slowed down some and that it was too hard on motors as well as sometimes resulting in spread out races. JMS is a gorgeous race track and one of the finest in the Midwest without doubt. Everything about it is first class in all regards. However, since the very first time I saw races there, I was of the opinion that if there was one thing that could have been changed, it would have been to make the track just a little bit smaller.
What they did was pull in both corners basically the width of the track. The wall that surrounds the track is still there, but it is now considerably away from the racing surface. The banking of the track stops and a flat run off area is behind that with the wall then behind that. Surprisingly, with that much major construction just a few weeks ago, the track was in excellent shape and was very smooth. It was a day show on Sunday and as Delmar himself said, it will be weeks until a fair judging of the new surface can be made to determine if the new layout improves the racing. However, for afternoon racing, it was some of the best day time racing I've seen in quite some time. As I said, the track stayed nice and smooth and with the steep banking at JMS, the cars are still able to drive deep into the corners and not just hug the bottom. The track got black from top to bottom but I didn't see any evidence that it was rubbering up and there was next to none as far as dust. Delmar had to do track prep only once and all he did do was mist the cushion while he didn't touch the groove at all. For an early Spring race under brutal(for racing at least with sun, wind and plenty of warmth) conditions, I thought the track conditions were excellent.
There is excitement in the Late Model division with the addition of NeSmith sanctioning. Down to the South in Kansas, crate Late Model racing is starting to take hold and they run under NeSmith rules also so there was a fine invasion of Kansas Late Models for this weekend's shows. And the Kansas crew reports that many of them will race regularly or semi regularly at JMS during the season so the hopes are high that the Late Model counts were be noticeably larger in 2017.
There were about one hundred and ten cars on hand in the six divisions that were racing on Sunday. While that is not bad, it still seems that for some reason the car counts don't seem to match up with the grandness of the offered facility. Perhaps part of the problem is that McCool Junction/York is a relatively rural area with not a huge population base. But as Delmar said rather bitterly I might ad, no matter what they do they just can't seem to draw any race cars from East of highway 81, no matter what they do. Now they feel that they will pick up more cars from the Lexington area as well as from Kansas while the Eastern cars continue to do their own thing.
It was a treat to see Delmar again and meet his dog Lucky who follows her master where ever he goes at the facility, including riding in the water truck. It was also a pleasure to again cross paths with Wayne Dake who has again returned to JMS as the co-announcer. Wayne is a mainstay of Nebraska and Midwest racing and has called races at a lot of different tracks across the Midwest. While he says he's cutting back, and JMS is the only track he still works at, being a "people person" gives him the chance to see many of his old friends from a wide range of racing contacts.
As stated earlier, for an afternoon show, it was one of the quickest run and smoothest day time shows I've seen in a long time. There were very few yellow flags and the assorted spins and track maintenance sessions that normally accompany day time racing. And this was day time racing to the extreme with temperatures in the eighties, bright sun and some wind to go with it. In fact, after having to bundle up like an Eskimo for most shows in the last few weeks, a coat wasn't even needed on Sunday.
Among the biggest winners of the day and weekend were Mike Nichols and Jared Hackler. Nichols redrew the front row for the Stock Car feature and wasn't pressured in the nonstop main. He also won on Saturday. Hackler also redrew the front row and won for the second straight day as he dominated the Sport Mods. And I almost forgot Roy Armstrong too. He was also a double winner, taking Hobby Stock features on both days also.
Justin Gregg dominated the Modified feature after he started on the pole and led all the way. Dylan Smith was the big mover in the Modifieds and if the race would have had a few more laps, he likely could have been a challenger as he was getting faster by the lap and simply ran out of time.
The only controversy occurred during the Late Model feature. And truly it wasn't controversy as much as just bad luck. Chris Buller had taken the lead from the beginning of the main and led the first eighteen laps. However, he was having trouble with a lapped car and when they got together on the back chute, Buller ended up in the wall and lost an apparent victory. Ben Sukup inherited the lead and drove home to the win in his new Swartz chassis car.
Denny Berghahn Jr. won the Sport Compact feature after a good battle with Kyle Owen. Tyler Thompson, the traveler from Sioux City who makes just about every Sport Compact show in the Western half of Iowa and eastern half of Nebraska, came charging up from eighth to finish a close second.
From start to finish, even with extra laps and cars, the program was completed in just over three hours, one of the quickest shows I've seen so far this Spring. JMS remains one of the nicest facilities in the Midwest for sure and if traveling through the central Nebraska area, you would not be sorry if you dropped in there for a race. I enjoyed my visit and just wished that I lived a lot closer so I could enjoy the place more often. Perhaps I can talk Delmar into hosting some sort of special event for Mods or Late Models early in the year like they used to host. That would be great.
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