Friday night, October 19th would prove to be quite the night at Wagamon's Ogilvie Raceway. Scheduled for both Friday night, October 19th and Saturday night, October 20th, the plan was to run off the ninth annual Topless Nationals at this East Central Minnesota facility. It would also prove to be the final event scheduled for the Gopher State in 2018.
This event started out with humble beginnings and almost as an after thought to the completion of the racing season. It started to "pick up steam" as a race for a couple years then seemed to lose a little punch. However, the last couple of years have seen it again start to become a bigger event and this year would see both the largest car count of its existence and would also see the most entrants from other sanctioning bodies also entered.
However, before the event could even get started, the weather, as it has for much of the Summer, had to once again play a part in what would be presented. The forecast for Friday was fine except that it would be very windy. After that however, the winds of Winter would start howling over the upper Midwest with bitterly cold temperatures, and the first hints of snow expected throughout much of the area.
The owners and management of Ogilvie Raceway decided to condense the racing program into a one day show with the complete program in all six classes that were raced being run off on Friday night. This would prove to be a challenging task but not to the level that it turned out to be as many of us underestimated just how many drivers would be interesting in still racing. I thought that many drivers would be anxious to get one more night of racing in but there were many more than I expected to be and the distance some traveled to get that one last "fix" in was impressive.
The Modifieds, B Mods(as we were calling them generically on this night), Super Stocks and Mod Fours were all required to remove the roofs from their race cars. Other than that, each driver was supposed to select the sanctioning body they race under and run according to those rules with no mixing of rules permitted. The Street Stocks had the choice of whether to remove the roofs or not but there was extra pay for those that did while the Hornets were not allowed to remove their roofs.
When the final tally was in and all drivers were signed in to race, two hundred and fifteen drivers were on hand to race with a jaw dropping seventy nine B Mods topping the charts. There were eleven drivers that drove all the way from Canada to race for just the one night and there were also entries from North Dakota, South Dakota, Michigan, Wisconsin and host Minnesota.
I have a theory why some of the late season races have drawn so well this year in car counts. Part of it is that, quite frankly, I think we here in the upper Midwest have many of the drivers that are more willing to travel for races than any other part of the country. Just ask the Whitworth's at Humboldt about that. They figured that out years ago. But this year has been especially unique and I believe it has been because the racing season started so slowly due to all the late Spring weather and since Labor Day, the same struggles have hit a number of tracks. Drivers are still anxious to race this year because much of the racing season has been robbed from them.
Despite the huge influx of drivers that all seemed to storm the pit gate at about the same time, the officials at the "Big O" were ready for the tidal wave of entrants and the show started just about right on time, something that was important given the number of races we would be seeing. And in fact, there ended up being twenty nine qualifying races before we could get to the six main events. It was a cool night but not intolerable, particularly for those of us who used the main building as a windbreak as the weather people were correct about the strong winds just getting worse as the evening progressed.
With the majority of the car being topless, it does give them a different look and while it is something that I would not like on a regular basis, at the end of the year it serves to spice things up a bit. So not only are the drivers revealed to the fans, with the Halloween season being upon us, many of the drivers and crews use this race to further enliven things. Many of the cars have strings of lights hanging from the roll cages and things like brooms, skeletons and evil demons can be seen riding along with a number of the drivers. In fact, when the cars go by for their pre feature presentation, it looks as much like a gondola parade on the 4th of July as it does an auto race!
The track also gets into the festivities as this event has morphed into a fund raiser for Breast Cancer awareness as it is this month and the track goes as far as to paint all their concrete walls surrounding the track pink for the occasion. All the ute tires in the infield are also pink and just about everything not bolted down is painted pink for the night. And in fact the drivers are told not to get mad and "seeing red" but instead should be "seeing pink."
Passing points was the format on this night with the top sixteen in each class moving straight up to the main events. The only classes that didn't require at least one B were the Streets and Mod Fours. After all this amount of racing, the track was black and slick from top to bottom but drivers were able to run multiple grooves and there was much side by side racing.
The Streets ran off the first main event with Charlie "The Iron" Shiek taking the win. He started on the pole but slipped back in the field until he went to the high groove and then he blew past Kyle Howland to take the lead and then fight off a late challenge from Howland for the win. Howland finished a strong second with Ryan Kostreba, swapping cars with his brother Russ for the night, taking third while Russ drove the Super Stock.
Only twenty five of the seventy nine B Mods on hand even made it to the track for the main event and it was a surprise winner that took the honors. Jeffrey Lein Jr, was driving for only the second time in a car his father purchased for himself to drive while Jeffrey has been focusing most of his racing efforts in his Modified. Lein Jr also started on the pole and fought off efforts of some of the strongest around as he took the win over "Cowboy" Shane Howell and Brandon Copp.
In the Super Stocks, the "Flying Farmer", Nick Oreskovich from Mason Wisconsin led for most of the race until a late race yellow really threw him under the bus. My guess is that his tires glazed over or perhaps by this time of the night they actually had ice on them but for whatever reason, he didn't take off well on the final restart and he was passed for the lead.
It was an unlikely winner as Tim Johnson, a former national champ in the class who has run a short schedule this year, was in the car owned by Don Shaw and drove it to victory lane. Shaw, who has a car for virtually every class in our area, routinely puts other drivers in his cars and one of his biggest rivals in Johnson caught the ride in the car on this night and made it work. Oreskovich fought his way back up to second at the finish with Shane Sabraski coming from tenth to finish third.
Jeremy Nelson led from start to finish to win the Modified feature race. The track started to take rubber during the Super Stocks so they took time to "rip" the track just before their main event which was the only time all night that they did much to the track, despite the huge number of laps that was put on the surface on Friday night. Late in the race, Sabraski found a line on the track that really caused him to speed up and the finish of this race was a photo, with Nelson holding on by .055 seconds for the win. This is always confusing as there are two Jeremy Nelson's that both run very well in this area and the Jeremy N. that won Friday is the one from Alexandria who was the 2017 Advantage RV Mod Tour champion. Track champion at the "Big O", Jody Bellefeuille was third.
At this point, just as the weather man had promised, it started to rain lightly. Now, we are talking well after 1 am already and the question was, how long are they going to try before they call it a night. It was very close to being a wash at this point but just when it looked it's darkest, the rain stopped and they quickly rolled in the track and restarted the show. After all, there were a lot of drivers in the Mod Fours and Hornets that had towed a long way and also wanted to race.
Dustin Holtquist was the bad luck beneficiary of the night as he led the first twelve laps of the Mod Four feature and had things under control when a late race yellow for a stalled car, and a marginal call whether to stop or not, cost him. He didn't take off strong back under green and was passed by Mitch Hribar who went on for the win. Dustin's father Bob, who towed all the way from South Dakota, finished third.
The Hornet class seems to be the only class where the non WISSOTA cars seem to shine. While the Mods and Sport Mods from outside the sanctioning area seem to have a very tough time keeping up, the Hornet rules seem to favor the IMCA cars or at least allow them to run very strong. However, it was an area driver that took the win Friday. Matt Dettman started in the third row and drove up into the lead and then held off a big pack of challengers. This race saw the yellow wave for a spin on the last lap and since everyone took the white flag, the race was scored complete. Matt Pederson, who runs unsanctioned with anyone and pulled all the way from Fargo North Dakota, was second with IMCA driver Joshua Uhl finishing third.
It was well after 2 am in the morning when the final checkered flag waved so it was a very long night of racing. However, the racing was almost nonstop and just the result of so many cars on hand and so many qualifying races that needed to be completed that caused the evening to run so long. Track employees had to have been exhausted but everything functioned smoothly from start to finish. It was quite a memorable night for all concerned and the track's call was a good one as Saturday was brutal and would not have been possible to race under such horrible conditions. The crowd was fair but with the huge number of people in the pits I feel fairly certain that everything came out OK finance wise which is important if we want to see these races continue.
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