Wednesday, July 26, 2017

Dubuque County Fair Much More Than That

On Tuesday, July 25th, I was off for a couple days of Fair racing in Iowa. The Dubuque County Fair was starting its six day run and unlike many Fairs that have given dirt track racing the "boot" for the most part, the good folks of Dubuque County seem to embrace the racers as three of the six nights of the Fair feature dirt track racing. And the Tuesday, Wednesday doubleheader is rapidly becoming one of my favorite midweek stops of the Summer.

On tap Tuesday was what they have termed "Open Wheel Tuesday" featuring the Sprint Invaders 360 Sprint Car Series, the IMCA Modifieds with their traveling Hawkeye Dirt Tour Series and the local IMCA Sport Modifieds if a full program also. Wednesday will feature all six classes that normally race Dubuque with much extra money on the line for all classes.

I drove in rain for much of the trip but just a few miles Northeast of Dubuque the sun came out and it was sunny and steamy in Dubuque. I guess it would be what you would call almost ideal Fair weather with warmth and just of bit of humidity and I've discovered that above all else, what would Iowa be in the Summer without plenty of humidity?

Being just the first day of the Fair, I was surprised by the size of the afternoon crowd of people just visiting the Fair and it would only get bigger as the day would progress. The Fairgrounds was all "spruced" up for the sixty fourth addition of the County Fair and the race track also received its fair share of brightening up. The boards on the bleachers had all been painted and the wall surrounding the track has also received a coat of paint(I would have preferred if they wouldn't have stayed with the alternate red and white combination though, as that is a throwback to the NASCAR days of long, long ago). This was also my first chance to see the new scoreboard in action and while not particularly fancy, it was functional and got the job done with positions one through five posted plus it kept the laps completed. It would have been nice if they had rigged it up so that they could have gotten a sponsor sign on it but perhaps that is still coming. I've always found that scoreboards are pretty easy to get sponsors for. They also have a new "porch" behind the grandstand in turn one that has bar stools and where drinks are served and I understand the size of that is to be increased over time also.

The Sprint Invaders caught the crowd's fancy when they first appeared here two years ago as Sprint Car racing isn't seen very often in Northeast Iowa and let's face it, just about everything is exciting at Dubuque if the track is right. This year they increased their car count as twenty one of the winged cars signed in to race. They also brought some bigger names this year with the McCarl family, Bill Balog and Dominic Scelzi.

The Sprint Invaders portion of the program would consist of three quick heats and a twenty five lap main event. The three heats went off without a yellow and while the main event got bogged down with five yellows, it still seemed to move along fairly quickly. I could sense by the tone of his voice and some of the comments he made that series announcer Jeff Broeg was getting just a bit "edgy" with the number of yellows for minor spins but overall they put on a good show.

Those fans that don't get to see the sprint cars "slide job" each other had a field day as there was much of that taking place and I would have to say that all the "sliders" were of the clean variety. Terry McCarl and Scelzi put on a show dive bombing each other in the early going before the dominance of Scelzi set in and then he took over control of the last part of the race, handling lapped traffic very well. I was a little partial to the Wisconsin driver Balog, who I got to see race shortly after he moved back to the Midwest from Alaska as his family lives in the bordering county to where I live about forty miles from me and as a kid, I got to see his dad race at our local track. He ran well for third but didn't have the speed to match the top two. The Sprint Invader portion of the program was well received by the fans and I'm quite sure they will be welcomed back again next year.

For the Modified fans, the Hawkeye Dirt Tour is as good as it gets for a traveling series in the Hawkeye State. Thirty Modifieds signed in to race, down about ten from last year but still presenting a solid field of strong competitors. One of the reasons that the Tour race is always a good one here is that there are a strong group of local racers who always turn out to "play" and that was the case again on Tuesday. Where there was a "fall down" was with the travelers on the Hawkeye Dirt Tour as only five of the top ten in points and six of the top twenty in points were on hand.

Four heats and two B features set the twenty four car field for the Modified thirty lap Modified main event with Jeff Aikey and Brandon Maitland receving the two provisionals.

It seems to me that whether he is driving his Late Model or his Modified, when Justin Kay shows up at Dubuque, everyone else is then racing for second. In the last few years, I bet if I go back and check my records, seventy five per cent of the time I've been here and Kay was racing, he ended up in victory lane. And such was the case again Tuesday. Veteran Kenny Kostenbader gave him a good fight, leading for the first twenty laps of the race as Kay moved his way up after starting eighth on the grid. Schulte, Droste, Duffy and Rust couldn't hold him back though and after he worked into second, it was a matter of finding the opening to get past Kenny.

Kostenbader fought hard though, and Kay was thwarted on several occasions until he finally found an opening on the low side in turn four on lap twenty and once he got a nose past Kenny, it was "lights out" as he disappeared into the humid Iowa night from the field.

A late yellow, the only one of the race, proved to be Kostenbader's downfall as he dropped several positions in the late going with Kelly Shryock driving a determined race to move into second. This allowed him to retake the point lead in the Hawkeye Dirt Tour with only a couple of races left in two weeks in western Iowa to determine the outcome. Kay becomes the first repeat winner on the series this year.

It must have been a rough year for the Sport Mods as a number of them were sporting plain tin without graphics on the sides of their cars and numbers taped on. It would seem that there must have been plenty of contact going on at the various tracks. While I saw a couple of instances of "dive bombing" after the checkers by drivers who felt they had been "disrespected", overall the Sport Mod portion of the program went very smoothly. In fact, with three heat races and a twenty lap main, the yellow waved only twice all night and that's pretty darn good by anyone's measure.

Timmy Current came storming up from the fifth row to take the lead in the Sport Mod feature quickly and with only the one yellow with eight laps complete to bunch the field, he ran away to a very convincing victory. Tyler Soppe raced into second but had nothing for the leader as he was unable to cut into his lead at all.

A post race interview revealed that Current was just getting back into racing following an accident of some sort. They didn't elaborate on it in the interview and I'll have to apologize as I'm just not familiar with what they were speaking of. In any case, Current was very fast and deserving of the win Tuesday.

A couple drivers would qualify for the "heartbreak" of the night award. Jerry Miles was leading the Sport Mod feature until the one yellow on lap nine, but then when they restarted the field, his car wouldn't fire. A quick push to the infield and a service call by his crew got him going again but by then he had to go to the tail. His run back up to sixth without a single yellow to help was a determined one.

Jason Schueller was in a position to make the main through a Modified B feature when it was discovered that he didn't have a cap on his gas tank after fuel came spewing out every time he threw the car into a turn. A quick run to his outside pit area fixed that problem, but he wasn't able to march his way back up into a qualifying position and he watched the feature from the pits.

The track was in excellent shape for racing on Tuesday and of course, all that humidity helps to keep a track moist and the bite there, but Keith Simmons was in charge of track prep on this night and he made sure that plenty of H2O was thrown on the track before the show. In fact, they had to roll the top side several times to keep the berm from getting too high, but the track was smooth, racy and wide. With no other things to worry about other than the track, Keith is one of the best at getting moisture into the racing surface.

There was a very large crowd on hand, with the size even a bit of a surprise to me given that it was a Tuesday. Even the winning drivers in victory lane commented on just how much fun it is to race in front of a big swarm of fans.

I have already been to a number of Fair races this year and that is how I felt about most of them; they were just Fair. However, the Dubuque County Fair is much different than that. This is one of the Fairs that I really like. There are big and enthusiastic crowds, there is plenty of fine food to be had, plenty of cold beer to be consumed(not by me of course as I'm driving) and plenty of loud and entertaining music. Even though it was a Tuesday it seemed that many were planning to hang out until closing time. This Fair has the atmosphere that most Fairs are now missing. Keep up the good work Dubuque County and all those that are on hand to have fun. 

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