Saturday, August 19, 2017

Pavlicek Tops Sanders Challenge Modified Event at NCR

The second annual Sanders Metal Products Challenge Tour started the first of its four night swing on Thursday, August 17th at the Norman County Raceway in Ada Minnesota. Along with the IMCA Modifieds, IMCA sanctioned Stock Cars and Sport Mods were also on the card along with WISSOTA sanctioned Midwest Modifieds.

This was the second year of the Sanders Challenge which is compromised of four straight nights of racing with each show worth a grand to win and a seven thousand dollar point fund for the top twenty cars in combined points with their three of four best shows used to total the points.

Besides Norman County, the other tracks on the tour are the Red River Valley Speedway in West Fargo North Dakota, promoter Jake Bitker's other track that he runs, the Jamestown Speedway in North Dakota and the Buffalo River Speedway near Glyndon Minnesota where the series would wrap up on Sunday night. Once you got to the area, the four tracks are all within a fairly short drive between them, but oh my, all four are a long way from most places. When you start getting North of Fargo, you know that you're a long way from the rest of the world.

The tours opening night was able by one to top the opening night field of last year's show as the featured division of IMCA Modifieds drew forty seven cars for their opening night show. I'm not certain but I believe that this years tour drew more local and regional entries as there were no drivers on hand from too far away such as there were last year. Most of the entrants were from the eastern side of North Dakota and across the border in Minnesota with a few western North Dakota drivers on hand along with one Wisconsin driver, Luke Schilling, who brought his car West to race with his brother who lives in Park Rapids Minnesota and races in this area.

NCR is about a three eighth mile oval with long chutes, tight turns and black dirt as the racing surface. It is located at the Norman County Fairgrounds with Ada having about seventeen hundred residents in a largely rural farm country. However, both Fargo and Grand Forks are within reasonable driving distance and Fargo particularly, provides both racers and fans. Because it is a Thursday night venue, everyone is very late arriving and on this night, when hot laps were offered a half hour before race time, something that normally isn't done, only about half the Modifieds were on the grounds yet and about twenty fans in the stands.

It's always a mad last minute scramble here, but it always seems to work out as they started the show right on time and as the first events unfolded, the grandstand filled up nicely. The track announcer pointed out that the grandstand is ninety nine years old and it looks every day of it! The grandstand has a West Liberty or West Union feel to it as the aisles are very narrow, posts that block your view seem to also be everywhere and the seating is very uncomfortable. Very much like the KRA Speedway in Willmar Minnesota that is in the same boat, they have been waiting for a tornado to come through for years and wipe out the grandstand so they can start over with something a whole lot better, but so far, no luck.

Five heats and two B features set the field for the twenty four car starting field for the Modified main event. In a main event that saw only two yellow flags, it was the two #17 cars of Rich Pavlicek and Mike Greseth that battled it out for the win. First Pavlicek took the lead and then Greseth drove around him to take over the top spot.

A yellow on lap nine bunched the field and Pavilcek was able to drive under Greseth to retake the lead as the bottom side of the track started to quicken up. Despite over an inch of rain the day before, the track crew had whipped the track into good racing shape and it raced very much like it normally does, with it being hard and slick. It started out top side dominant and as the night progressed, everyone started moving down the track and Pavlicek beat Greseth back to the low side and after that, they ran pretty much equal but Greseth was never able to make a challenging move.

Tyler Peterson, Johnny Correll and Austin Arneson rounded out the top five as area drivers dominated the action.

NCR added the Sport Mods a couple of years ago and so far, they have been able to get around a dozen that race most weeks at Norman County. They have also added the class at Fargo where they have a few more cars but many of them do not travel to Ada on Thursday. A couple cars are quite superior to the rest of the field with Andy "spud" Wagner and Jesse Skalicky, who central Iowa folks know all about after he came into their home territory this Summer and whipped them, usually battle it out for the win. Such was the case again with Skalicky getting to the front first and scoring a fairly easy win.

The Stock Cars are new to this area in 2017 and so far, they have not been able to generate more than just a few entrants. Again, Fargo gets a few more and occasionally gets a traveler from western North Dakota where they are firmly established. In the meantime, patience is needed until more drivers decide to get into the class, and that won't happen until they are sure the class will last. Aaron Olson, a former Modified driver won a very easy victory on this night.

Of the support classes, the WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds by far offer the best racing. This is an established class in the area with lots of drivers and many to draw from who come from throughout the area. They were not scheduled to race on this night but were added and that turned out to be a good idea as without them, the undercard for the night would have been pretty weak. The MidMods ran two qualifying heat races and a non stop main event with their part of the program going just as a good support class should, with an entertaining main event, and not a lot of slowdowns to drag down the show.

In their main, point leader Dylan Goplen drove past early leader Brock Gronwald for the win with Jamestown's Jason Grimes, racing in two classes, coming home a strong third. 

It was a good night of racing and for me, a chance to see a number of Modified drivers that I read about but seldom get the chance to see in person. The show got done just a bit late at 11 pm for a week night show but for most on hand it was just the start of a four day racing holiday so they weren't too worried. Also, most of them weren't as crazy as to drive five and a half hours just to watch one race and then head home.

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