Wednesday, June 14, 2017

Angst "Steam rolls" Field at MTS

I'm back. I've been doing a lot of WISSOTA racing in the last couple of weeks so you haven't seen much of me on these pages. I'd love to give you reports from my recent visits to the Buena Vista Raceway in Alta Iowa or the first ever appearance of Late Models at the historic Angell Park Speedway in Sun Prairie Wisconsin but management decided otherwise so those will have to disappear into "the cloud" forever.

However, one race that I can report on was the 1st annual Steamboat Days Race for a Cause at Bob Timm's Mississippi Thunder Speedway near Fountain City Wisconsin held on Tuesday night, June 13th.

A little back round is needed here. MTS isn't right on the Mississippi River but it is very close to the river and while the race track sits just a couple miles North of Fountain City, both the city of Fountain City Wisconsin and its neighboring city just down the river in Winona Minnesota, by far the biggest local population center,  both are right on the Mississippi. Obviously, the river is important to local commerce and Fountain City has one of the biggest levees on the river operated by the Army Corp of Engineers. Tourism is a big part of the area economy so celebrations like this area huge.

Every year Winona has their Steamboat Days Festival featuring all sorts of activities and street dances and live music are among their biggest draws. Over the years, MTS has tried to run special events on their regular Friday night slot and have not done well in attendance due to all the Steamboat Days activities. They have also taken that Friday night off and didn't race on some years.

This year they came up with a new strategy, one that I could be a part of. They decided to race on Tuesday night, featuring a short program of only three classes that would be done early so that spectators, if they wanted, could still get back to Winona before the music started at 10 pm. They also had a special admission price of only five dollars to get in or free admission for those that had a Steamboat Days button. It seemed like a good plan but no one took in to account the weather, which threw another "blast furnace with humidity" kind of day at the track, with it being almost too miserable to even be outside. An inch and a half of rain the day before and the miserable heat didn't stop the racing action, but no doubt it did put a damper on the crowd in attendance.

MTS is a USRA sanctioned track with Hobby Stocks, B Mods and Modifieds being the three classes in action on this night. There aren't many USRA sanctioned tracks in this part of the country so they have to rely on drivers from Rochester, the Austin area of Chateau Speedway and drivers from northeastern Iowa to show up to enhance the local fields.

The Hobby Stock class was just started at the track last year and it has been slow to build. Tuesday they had a dozen Hobbies but about half were from the Decorah Iowa area who journeyed up on this night. In an attempt to "beef" up the numbers in the class, Timm recently allowed the WISSOTA Street Stocks, the class he eliminated to bring in the Hobby Stocks, to race with the Hobbies but that proved to be an unfair match and the local drivers complained about that, so he stopped that practice.

MTS always has lots of B Mods and their field Tuesday was down considerably from their regular numbers, likely because of the midweek race.

Getting Modifieds has been a struggle at MTS this year, just as it has been an many tracks across the country. Normally they struggle to just get enough for two heats and on this night, they had fourteen sign in to race. Because of the USMTS rain out in Aberdeen South Dakota, scheduled for Tuesday also, they picked up out of state travelers Ricky Thornton Jr, Zane Devilbiss and Lance Mari who were all in the area. They were likely looking for a pay check for gas money as they moved farther North and also to get laps at the track in preparation for upcoming shows. None would be factors in the night's racing with Mari the best at ninth in the main event.

Actually, I've never seen Thornton Jr so slow as he was on Tuesday, as he started and finished last in his heat race and was running in the last position in the main until he gave up and pulled into the infield.

Timm and his partners have done an amazing job of upgrading MTS since they bought the race track and it is hardly recognizable to the old, tri oval that used to be here. The latest change happened last Fall with a re configuring of the corners. Previously, the corners kind of flattened out in front of the wall so there was a run off area but also an area that couldn't be raced on.

Now, the track has been banked much higher that it was previously  and the banking continues its progressive nature right up to the "jersey barricades"  that surround the track. I've been told that it has helped the racing and allowed more passing and side by side racing.

I didn't see that on Tuesday however, as getting the track in shape from the previous rains had been their main focus and just getting the track dry enough to race on was their priority. So, the track didn't get properly watered, and the surface was kind of loose in the high groove, which kept the racers mostly in the low and middle lines all night with not much high side racing or passing taking place.

Just as promised, they started right on time at 7 pm, kept the three class show moving along and had the entire event done well before 9:30 pm. The program ran off incredibly smooth with a total of only three yellow flags waved all night. There was one big multi car pileup in the B Mod feature but other than that, it was mostly green flag racing.

Brady Link started on the outside pole of the Hobby Stock feature and he led all the way in a race that saw little happening. It was the fifth feature win at MTS already this season for Link and it makes it tough to try and build a class when one driver dominates so much that the competition is discouraged to even try.

The B Mods was much more intense with Alex Williamson leading for awhile until he was passed by Ben Moudry. Moudry led the rest of the way but had to fight off a couple of drivers. Kylie Kath, who usually races at Chateau Speedway on Fridays, nearly stole the race from the locals as he started seventh and moved up to second and appeared ready to challenge for the lead.

The big yellow pileup seemed to slow his momentum and Iowa's Dan Hovden got the jump on him on the restart and finished second. Youngster Jayden Larson is starting to pick up the pace as he moved from ninth to finish a close fourth.

There might not be a lot of Modifieds, but the ones they have are mighty tough. It was a four car parade of MB Customs that led the way with Josh Angst leading from start to finish with Jake Timm close behind along with Lucas Schott and Dustin Sorensen. Sorensen is the only one that doesn't race weekly at the track as he is a Chateau regular on Fridays. The Modified main event went green from start to finish with all cars still on the lead lap at the double checkers.

MTS is one of the few tracks around that has a posted order of events available on line and at the track ready for the first competitors. They also have a very nice, eight page color program that is free of charge and contains a yearly schedule, point standings, a concession menu, general track information, explanation of the classes racing and a driver profile every week. It's one of the more informative free programs that I have seen.

Thanks to Bob Timm and his staff for their help as well as a welcome from track co-announcer Dan Bailey. I didn't get to speak to Bob at all as on race night, the track is his "baby" and he spends the vast majority of his time either on the water wagon or some other heavy equipment.

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