Mike Marlar has been close on every night of the Wild West Shootout so far, but victory lane proved difficult to reach. That is until Friday night, January 12th when he led from start to finish to take the thirty lap Late Model feature on night number four of the Wild West Shootout at the F K Rod Ends Arizona Speedway. The Modified class proved to be as wide open as it has been with the fourth different winner in four nights with Minnesota's Blake Jegtvig earning the first place honors while Cole Searing continued his remarkable week of racing in the X Mods as he became the first repeat winner in that division and padded his point lead for the Shootout.
Car counts continued to be strong for round four and sixteen drivers made their first appearance of the week on Friday night with new drivers in all three classes. Car counts were forty six in the Late Models, fifty in the Modifieds and a week long high of forty five X Mods.
Weather conditions continued to be spectacular although it definitely does cool down considerably once that blazing sun sets. However, with the brutal weather elsewhere in most of the country, you would be hard pressed to find anyone complaining about having to put a coat on!
The track was lightning fast early with Marlar setting the quickest time of the week so far at 14.535 seconds and Ricky Weiss close behind. However, race conditions gradually deteriorated over the course of the evening and track officials didn't seem to spend as much time as on some other nights with track prep once the show got started. It seemed on this night that the most immediate concern was keeping the show moving and getting done as soon as possible. Perhaps they have been getting some noise complaints from Wednesday night's show they had to address as I was told that there are a couple of area residents that complain almost on a weekly basis.
In any event, the track went low side early in both the X Mod and Modified features and the Late Models were dominant on the top side next to the rail with the track starting to take rubber about half through the Late Model feature. In all honesty, while the show was far from being a bust, it was not a night of compelling racing such as we have seen so far this week.
Marlar got the jump early on Chris Simpson and locked into his lane on the track, near the top side and everyone pretty much followed his lead. Simpson gave up spots to both Weiss and Bobby Pierce before he settled in. Weiss showed lots of speed once again and he was able to close in on Marlar and give a couple of attempts to drop under him in the corners but he couldn't make the pass and got back in line again. Ricky was back in his top car on Friday after going to his back up car on Wednesday night while they determined that his main car was fully functional again.
The leaders got into lapped traffic which proved problematic as a couple of them didn't seem to want to yield the fast groove and it proved dicey for Marlar for a few laps but he remained cool and made a big move off turn two when he got by two cars at once and padded his lead over Weiss which he maintained to the checkered.
A fine job was turned in by Earl Pearson Jr who was a last minute replacement for Jason Rauen who was apparently late arriving from the airport and once Earl signed in as the driver, it was too late to change drivers again. Earl started fifth and maintained for thirty laps as he ran a solid race in an unfamiliar car but a Black Diamond like what he will be racing this year.
The Modified feature looked like a "back in the day" Saturday night show at Tucson as area residents Jake O'Neil and R.C. Whitwell shared the front row for the twenty five lap main. However, a lap two spin by Whitwell proved costly as it eliminated Lucas Schott, Jason Krohn and Dustin Strand and sent Whitwell to the back where he did race his way all the way back up to tenth with not a single more yellow to help him out.
But the night belonged to Blake Jegtvig. Jegtvig, who was always one of the top runners at this event when it was held in Tucson, has had a couple of slow years by his standards recently with the feature wins not coming in bunches like previously. However, on this night he was hooked up well and was able to drive under O'Neil and take the lead early and once in front, put distance on the field. The Scott brothers moved into second and third and Stormy was able to close to within a few car lengths when Jegtvig hit traffic.
However, once Blake was clear again, he was able to extend his lead in the last few laps and drive home for the win. O'Neil eventually gave up on the top side and dropped low into fourth with Tyler Peterson getting his first top five of the week.
Searing continued his strong drives this week with another win in the X Mods. The Huron South Dakota driver, who normally races a Super Stock back in the Midwest and was third in WISSOTA national points last year in that class, has proved that he can wheel an open wheel car also. As a hired gun this week for the George Racing Team, he has strung together two wins and two second place finishes to dominate the X Mods. Friday night he led all the way for the win with his main challenge being Wednesday night's winner, Jason VandeKamp. He started seventh and quickly worked his way into second but while he could remain close, he never could muster a serious challenge for the win.
The drive of the race was executed by North Dakota's Eric Haugland. Seemingly the only driver in the class to be able to make the top side work, from the half way point of the race on he was making a concerted charge to the front as he drove by driver after driver using the outside lane. He came from fourteenth on the grid to move into third following a late restart with only two laps to go as he passed Lucas Rodin for the spot. WISSOTA drivers finished in the top four spots and had six of the top ten finishing positions.
Even the most veteran and savvy of drivers continue to comment on how hard this track is to read. They are amazed how quickly it can turn from being slimy to start to take rubber, such as it did in the Late Model feature. They are also surprised and shocked how often and quickly the fast lane around the track will move as this dirt here, perhaps in combination with the local weather conditions, seems difficult to predict. But that to is part of the fun of this adventure.
As we move into the second half of this racing vacation, the hard racing is starting to take its toll. While most of the competitors are still on hand and few have left for home early, some of the teams are starting to get tired of the daily repairs that seem to be required and some of those that have been struggling are now starting to push harder to get to the front and while this evening was quite free of "yellow flag fever", the mechanical toll on the cars is starting to increase with many teams forced to go to back up motors etc.
One team I talked that routinely does very well here in the Desert but has had a challenging week in the Strand Racing Team out of Grand Forks North Dakota. They are on their third motor for their X Mod and the second motor in the Modified. A crazy issue with their fuel cell that starved out the motor in the X Mods on restarts and cost them dearly while hurting two motors was finally resolved and Dustin's father Brian took the wheel of the X Mod on Friday night. Running a motor borrowed from Scott Bintz, Brian made the feature although he finished quite far back. Dustin, meanwhile, had his bad luck continue when he was in the wrong spot early in the Mod feature and got caught up in the Whitwell deal.
Another bad luck driver was California's Cody Laney. He blew a motor in his Mod on practice night and they finally got another motor back in the car for tonight's show. So, guess what happened? Just a few short laps into his heat race and the motor lets go in a cloud of smoke and his night is done.
I also spoke with Don Shaw who got a scare right at the end of the winning run on Wednesday night when the motor quit and then blew much fire when it was restarted. Apparently it was just a minor issue, perhaps even a freak thing, and they could find no problems with the motor. That was a good thing as Shaw has only one motor for this trip and a failure would have forced him to do some "shopping" in the pit area. Friday night Shaw tried a banzai move on the start of his heat race knowing that he had to get to the top and the quick lane but it failed and he was forced to run a B Feature. This doomed his night on an evening where passing was at a premium and he had to just ride along in the main event.
Tonight's trivia question is this, who was the only driver that arrived on the grounds Friday that came from some place where it was actually warmer than here in Phoenix? The answer is, Lance Schill. The North Dakota driver left his rig here last week and then took his family on a vacation to Hawaii. He arrived back in town to race tonight with both his X Mod and Modified. While he showed lots of speed, the night did not end good for him and the Mod suffered an apparent blown motor while the X Mod was also a DNF.
With a calm night and the air hanging heavy over the Arizona Speedway, a thick haze of campfire smoke gave the entire facility a surreal appearance on Friday night. The final two sessions of this meet will be held with earlier starting times and the drivers will be lobbying for more track prep as needed to avoid the situation that occurred during tonight's Late Model feature.
One problematic area on a otherwise fine racing facility is the exit from the track in turn one. It is a straight shot off the front chute but is protected by a guard rail that then wraps all the way through turn two. It does have a couple of big tractor tires protecting it but also does offer a rather blunt end projecting right straight out to catch cars in peril. Twice tonight and about a half dozen times this week, drivers have hit the blunt end of this rail hard, damaging their cars but so far managing to avoid injury but it just looks like a bad accident waiting to happen. When cars hit the front stretch wall and can't get off the wall, they seem to slide straight into that blunt end which just isn't good. Hopefully some re-engineering of this section of the track is done by next year.
Friday night's crowd was huge, and perhaps the biggest ever for a Friday night for this series. It would appear that by all accounts that this has, to this point, been a hugely successful week of racing and helping everyone forget the huge disappointment of last year's double rain outs to end the week.
No comments:
Post a Comment