The King of America VII kicked off Thursday night, March 23rd at the Whitworth family's Humboldt Speedway. Thursday night was not actually part of the "King" but instead the first round of the Midwest Region of USMTS for 2017. In a change of format for this year's event, rather than running four sets of point paying heat races over two nights and than taking the best three of them to determine the starting positions for Saturday night's "King" finale, this year they instead opted to run the first Midwest Region points race on Thursday, which will be followed on Friday night by three rounds of heat races to gather points for Saturday. New also this year is the fact that no heat may be thrown out so all three will be extremely important as point gathering events for Saturday night's ten grand to win championship.
Have you noticed that the trend now is when any kind of special event tacks on another day to its schedule, it's never just "an added race" anymore but instead becomes known as the "prelude" to whatever the event is. Such is the case for this race also so Thursday night's events were officially known as the "Prelude to the King."
Many wondered what this change in format would do for the overall event, or if indeed, it would have any affect on it at all. Of course, we can't say definitively for sure until Friday nights events are concluded but the opening night activities, which likely featured the vast majority of the cars that will be racing the rest of the weekend, produced what was likely one of the strongest fields of cars ever for the "King." Strong at least in quality. On the other hand, it was by far the smallest field of cars ever for this event which left some of us scratching our heads as to why.
For comparison sake, last year one hundred and six cars competed at least one of the three nights of this race. Thursday night, only sixty three cars signed in to race. Of course, a driver may show up on Friday at no penalty as Thursday night's racing will have no effect on what happens on Friday but the reality is that most drivers that plan on racing will be on hand for all three days.
Why the significant drop in entrants you ask. Perhaps this is the year that the mid pack driver with only a marginal chance of making the show decided to say his money and race a different event. Perhaps it was the weather forecast which was quite bleak for the Friday portion of the show and as I type this, it still will be a crap shoot whether racing takes place on Friday or not. Some drivers got burned two weeks ago when the B Mod race got pushed back to Sunday and many had to take off without getting the chance to run the main event. It could play out that way again this week although event promoter Todd Staley says they will finish it off Saturday no matter what. Likely some didn't want to chance it however.
So, for those that are "number crunchers" only, the turnout was likely disappointing but the reality is that the sixty three on hand do include just about every one of the best around and the racing will not suffer because of the number of drivers on hand. Likely the only discernible difference will be in the number of preliminaries on Saturday, and a few less of those events probably won't break anyone's heart.
Thursday's weather was unseasonable warm, sunny after a cloudy early morning and incredibly windy. All were very tough conditions to prep a race track and I thought the folks at Humboldt did about the best possible job they could given the circumstances. We were hoping that once the sun set the wind might lay down but such was not the case as it continued to scream out of the South, right into the main grandstand. And it came with such force that we were all wearing our Winter coats, even though the actual surface temperature was still at seventy degrees! We all looked like a bunch of drug addicts huddled around while the folks on the back chute were still wearing their t-shirts!
Even though they had soaked "the snot" out of the track, it dried off quickly and was black from top to bottom by the early portion of the program. However, I didn't see any evidence that it locked down and truly, for as bad as the conditions were, it was a decent race track for the main events. Yes, it was very dirty on the front stretch but that too was totally understandable, racing as we were in hurricane conditions.
Seven heat races and three B features set the twenty six car field for the USMTS forty lap main event and each of these races was truly like a main event. Most notable was heat race number four that had Fito Gallardo, Terry Phillips, Hunter Marriott, Ryan Gustin, Ricky Thornton Jr and Rodney Sanders all in the same race! Yikes. And the irony was that only Gallardo, Phillips and Thornton earned enough passing points to avoid a B feature. In fact, Gustin will not even make the main event after having too big a mountain to climb in his B.
However, come feature time and it was none of the "heavy hitters" that took home the three grand for the win but instead area driver Mitch Keeter. Keeter started on the outside pole and while there were several good battles for position behind him, he was never one of them as at the start and on the three subsequent restarts, he would always pull away from the field.
Keeter has been incredibly hard to beat at "the Hummer" so far this season, winning two of three events when the Mods ran as the support class to the B Mods two weeks ago and following that up by winning the season opener last Saturday night. He's using a pretty standard set up for around here with a GRT chassis and a Yeoman engine but he's definitely got something figured out as his car rolls so free through the corners and has great bite coming off the corners that no one has figured out how to pass him.
It will be interesting to see if he is able to maintain his pace when the all important heat races are contested on Friday. Behind Keeter, a good battle for second saw Cade Dillard and Lucas Schott swap positions on nearly every restart while Josh Angst and Dereck Ramirez did the same thing behind them. It was a pretty nice finish for two young Minnesota hotshots in Schott and Angst who only race here a time or so all year yet both looked very strong in their MB chassis. TP had one of his better runs of late as he moved up a number of spots.
It will be interesting to see how everyone handles the divergent styles needed for the next two nights as Friday will bring all out charges needed to gain points in the relatively short heats while those that make the feature will have to go into "tire saving" mode for the seventy lap feature race.
The "Ironman Challenge Series" for the B Mods also was on the card on Thursday night. Forty two of the B Mods were on hand and represented a wide area of the country that ran as far North as Minnesota and North Dakota.
While the field slugged it out to make the main, when push came to shove at the end it was two regional drivers in J.C. Morton and Ryan Gilmore that battled it out for the win. Morton, the big winner here two weeks ago, continued his hot streak as he fought off several challenges from Gilmore to take the twenty lap finale. The only non regular to have significant success was Minnesota's Alex Williamson who finished fourth after starting ninth. Cody Jolly and Missouri's Mike Tanner also finished in the top five. Friday night even more B Mods are expected as the winning share jumps up to fifteen hundred bucks.
It was like the old days on Thursday at Humboldt as the USMTS officials, along with the Humboldt officials, really cracked off the program in rapid fashion. Understanding that it was a week night and with the weather being so unpredictable, they moved the show along quickly but still, with the large number of races to be run, it was about 10:45 before the final checkered waved.
No comments:
Post a Comment