An eventful weekend started on Friday night, October 20th with a visit to the Mississippi Thunder Speedway near Fountain City Wisconsin for night one of their ninth annual Fast Festival. Originally scheduled for two weeks earlier, the entire weekend had been rained out and rescheduled for this weekend.
However, the weather was still not done toying with the river town track and after a dismal forecast for Saturday night that had been carried all week leading up to the race, the track opted to fold the event into just one night of racing on Friday, paying the extra purse for the one night show that had been originally planned for Saturday night's race following a regular pay night on Friday.
At this time of the year it seems that the racers are willing to do whatever it takes to get one last race in so even though it turned out to be just a one night event, the racers flocked to MTS to get one last race in before calling it a season. Spectacular weather on Friday certainly didn't hurt the cause and the MTS pit area was swelled to over flowing.
To my way of thinking, there can to be much of a good thing though, and MTS probably caused me to reach my tipping point on this issue. Along with their five regular USRA sanctioned classes, they also race 600 Mods on their third mile track plus both Senior and Junior Slingshots and Outlaw Mini Mods on their small track in the infield. Then, for fun, they also threw in USRA Stock Cars which have raced at the track this year on a few occasions.
But that wasn't enough apparently on this weekend as also invited were the WISSOTA Street Stocks and Midwest Modifieds. The Street Stocks used to race here and just for fun apparently, they also added the MidMods. Neither class was sanctioned this weekend but that didn't keep a big group of them from showing up to race one last time also.
So, if you have a calculator to do the math, by my count there were a mind numbing TWELVE classes of cars that each raced a full program!!! This may have been the most different classes I have ever seen at one show on one night and even I had to call "Uncle" at this. Programs ranged from a couple of heats and a feature to three classes that ran four heats, one or multiple B features and then of course, main events for all twelve classes. OMG, this was just way too much.
Track management touted that well over two hundred cars were in the pits racing but I am a "snob" in what I consider a true racing car and my total, minus the four classes powered by small motors equaled one hundred and eighty one cars, still a goodly figure.
With a forty five minute late starting time due to registering all the drivers, full shows in all twelve classes plus misting after nearly every race due to the high temperatures and extremely strong winds, it was going to be a late, late night. Even though they pushed each race out right at the conclusion of the proceeding one and nixed the driver interviews(which must have killed track announcer Dan Bailey), it turned into an obscenely long race program. Specific numbers will follow.
Racing was decent in all classes with a couple of really close finishes to highlight the racing action. The star performer of the night was Mondovi's Tommy Richards who won feature races in two classes. The irony is that Richards was one of the top runners at this track for the last several years. That is, until 2017 when they kicked him out the door when track management dropped the WISSOTA Super Stocks from their program and Richards took his Friday night racing up to the Red Cedar Speedway, along with his two brothers who both had also raced at MTS until both saw the classes that they had run in also eliminated in the past couple of years as track owner Bob Timm has moved to an all USRA program, so far with mixed results.
Tommy won both the Street Stocks and MidMods in borrowed rides for the night. He was driving the second Street owned by his brother Danny who also races in that class and he won the MidMods in an entry fielded by Calvin Iverson, a rookie driver that the Richards family has been mentoring this year. In fact, brother Danny also drove a second entry for Iverson in the MidMods while Calvin raced a third car that they fielded for this night.
For some reason, MTS slipped up and didn't add the Super Stocks also since that is the class that Tommy R. does the best in, being a top five driver in that class nationally for WISSOTA. How they forgot to include the Supers, I'll never know. Doesn't a "bakers dozen" of classes sound just peachy?
Even though the WISSOTA MidMods hadn't raced at the track all year, they fielded nearly three dozen cars of their own so the two "limited" Modified classes had well over sixty cars just between the two of them.
Other highlights of the racing program saw Jake Timm(no nepotism needed) start on the pole of the Modified feature and lead all the way for that win.
The closest race of the night was the B Mod feature where Parker Hale and Casey Knutson were banging wheels on the last corner as they fought for the lead with Hale prevailing.
The win for Elijah Zievenbergen in the Stock Cars was an important one as he is in a close battle for the USRA national title in the division. He grabbed the lead early and ran away from a good sized eighteen car field for the win.
Johnny Severtson came from the third row to win the Hornet feature, a race that saw IMCA national champion Nate Coopman on his lid after contact on the back chute as he tried to fight his way to the front of the field.
Those folks on hand were witness to the first racing start of Sam Mars from Mondovi. Sam, of course, is the son of national Late Model driving star Jimmy Mars, who was on hand to also try out a few things on a Modified. Sam is the middle school aged son of Jimmy(his exact age shall remain our secret) and way last Spring Jimmy told me that when he started out Sam, who has experience racing carts and such, in a real race car, he would have him drive a Limited Late Model to start right out and not develop some bad habits from driving some other class of car.
So Sam was behind the wheel of , a not surprisingly white #28, that was actually raced this season in the WISSOTA Late Models by Jesse Glenz. Sam was clearly right from the start not afraid of the car and he was "gassing it up" plenty. However, he got a little high coming out of turn two during his heat race, climbed up on the Jersey Barricades that make up the back wall and turned the car over on its lid where it slid down the track upside down.
Sam was unhurt and quickly clambered out of the car. Paraphrasing, his first words were "it isn't damaged too bad is it?" followed by, "sorry Dad." If Sam goes on to have a racing career anything like his dad's, we will all be able to say we were there the night that it all started, and what a memorable way to begin his racing career! It turned out to be quite the weekend for the Mars family starting with Sam's debut on Friday and ending up later during the weekend with the announcement that Jimmy Mars has been named as a member of the 2018 National Late Model Hall of Fame induction class. Congratulations to him. And I can say I also was on hand the night at the Red Cedar Speedway when Jimmy made his debut too.
Check the MTS website for a complete list of winners in all classes of racing.
Oh, one last thing. The final checkered flag waved at 2:06 am.
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