Saturday night, March 17th, the eighth annual King of America Modified special was completed at the Humboldt Speedway with Lucas Schott providing a spectacular performance as he controlled the seventy five lap main event, leading from start to finish and earning ten grand for himself and car owner Mike Wedelstadt. Schott's performance was so dominating that only in the last few laps, when yellow flags allowed runner up Ricky Thornton Jr to square up behind him did Schott ever have to deal with any serious challenge. and while Thornton Jr got fairly close on a couple of restarts, once some green flag laps were completed, Schott would gradually pull away once again and while the last yellow, of eleven, provided a two lap sprint to the finish, Schott took off strongly to make sure that there would be no photo finishes in 2018.
The USRA B Mods would also get a chance to run another complete program and J. C. Morton, who had been a challenger for the previous two nights, used the pole position to lead all twenty laps and score a solid win for himself and tote a grand back to Joplin Missouri.
Saturday was a night of last chance qualifying races as drivers ran the ladder in an effort to get into the top twenty eight positions to start the Modified main event. But first, in somewhat of an unusual move, the top twelve drivers, already locked into position from Friday night's point gathering races, were ordered to the tech shed before racing started for an extensive look see at the cars. The crews were told to bring plenty of tools with them as the cars were going to be disassembled and front ends and suspensions looked at. Apparently teching of the race cars is going to be a point of emphasis this year for the USMTS as more cars have been DQ'd this week and the preceding week than for quite some time.
In fact, one of the top twelve in points did have an issue as Darren Fuqua had some sort of fixable issue but one that the inspectors did not like when they first saw it. In what I would say was an unusual result of this, Fuqua was moved to the back of the feature lineup and Alex Stanford, thirteenth in Friday night points, was awarded a guaranteed spot instead. I have heard of cars that failed pretech not being allowed to race until their problem was corrected, but I never heard of an instance before where a car was ordered to the back of the pack for failed pretech. But there is always a first time for everything.
Twin Last Chance races were followed by a C feature and a B feature to set the grid for the Modified main event. The only driver to be able to climb every rung of the ladder and get to the main event was Kyle Strickler. And he was able to work his way up into the top ten in the main before he was collected in one of many wrecks that slowed the action. Between wrecks and mechanical failures, a considerable number of drivers failed to go the distance and at the end, there were only eleven cars running out of the twenty eight starters. Among the drivers that had strong runs going but failed to last the distance along with Strickler were Jason Krohn, Cade Dillard, Jake O'Neil and Jason Hughes.
Schott took the lead from the outside on the green and quickly stepped away from the field. O'Neill raced second for awhile R.C. Whitwell, Krohn, Johnny Scott and then Thorton Jr challenged. It took Thorton Jr a number of laps before he moved into second as he slowly and gradually worked his way forward. When he took second, it looked like there might possibly be a change of leadership but Schott seemed to pick up the pace when he needed to and following each of the many late yellows, after a lap or so he would gather his momentum and then gradually pull away from Thornton Jr.
There were two instances during the race when they actually were able to string together some green flag laps and that was when Schott was at his best as he patiently worked his way through traffic, being aggressive to take advantage of the holes but never putting himself at risk. The track was "farmed" right before the Modified feature and while it did help the track pick up speed, it wasn't the "banzai" type of track that often is the case after tiling of the surface takes place. It was mostly slick from top to bottom after they raced a few laps and I didn't observe that one groove was that dominant over the other. In other words, a good track to race on and not one that took rubber.
Behind Thornton Jr, it was the Scott brothers battling it out for third with Johnny prevailing. Stormy actually got lapped during the race but was saved by the yellow and with the attrition plus I think he was able to pick up the pace, he was able to patiently work his way back into the top five. Rodney Sanders also made up a lot of ground, starting seventeenth and grabbing a top five finish at the end.
Interestingly, both drivers that had the decision to either take the grand for finishing first or second in the Non Qualifier race or give up the money and tail the field chose to race as both stated their goal when they came was to make the main, so they raced. That was Bobby Malchus and Lance Town.
Both feature winners were a cut above the field on this night as while Morton started on the pole for the B Mod main, he had plenty of tough competitors behind him in Cody Jolly, Andy Bryant and Kris Jackson. However, even with a late yellow to set up a three lap dash, Morton pulled away and was able to keep the very fast Jolly behind him.
Lap eighteen of the B Mod feature saw by far the most violent wreck of the early season here. Tyler Kidwell got into the wall on the back chute and got hammered at full speed, folding up the rear end of his car like an accordion. Much of the pack came bearing down on the duo at high speed and the crashing was significant as cars were flying all over the track and through the infield. Kidwell took a significant hit and it took him awhile to get out of his car. Later a second ambulance showed at the track so I believe that he was transported just for a checkup. Around eight cars, or possibly more, were involved in the wreck and out of the race and besides Kidwell, the cars of Steve Muilenburg and Ryan Phillips appeared to have suffered the worst damage and that was significant. Barely half the field was left running for the last three laps.
A good crowd was on hand despite the fact that the weather took a significant turn for the worse as it was quite a cool night after two, by Kansas March standards, warm evenings. If face, due to the combination of a somewhat late start due to some extra track packing, the B Mod crash that took considerable time to clean up and the fact that the evening was getting mighty brisk, much of the pageantry of the event was forgone and after a four wide salute, the drivers in the Modified main simply lined up and they dropped the green flag. As it was, it was still after Midnight before the final checkered waved and a possible suggestion to both shorten up the evening and still allow for the desired pageantry would be to start a little earlier since all the competitors are already on hand and on Saturday folks should be able to get to the track earlier also. And if an earlier start is a little tougher on the track, "farming" has already been planned for anyway. Once again, the King of America seemed to be a very successful event and will likely be one of the premier events on the USMTS schedule again in 2019.
It was a tough weekend for the Staley family however, as Janet Staley's father, eighty eight year old Don Williams, passed away on Saturday morning and the entire Staley family would be heading back to Iowa as soon as they could following the last checkered flag.
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