The third annual Gateway Dirt Nationals at the Dome at America's Center kicked off on Thursday night, Nov. 29th. This year the event has been moved up on the calendar by several weeks so that it does not hit quite so close to the Christmas holiday. The common thinking would be that this move would improve the attendance, which has so far been awesome for the two years that this event has been held so far anyway, but since there are plenty of more potential seats to be filled at the dome, why not try and fill the whole house?
The other change involved the classes that are racing this year. Once again the Late Models are the featured class of cars, with up to one hundred and fifty allowed to enter the event. And as it has been for the three years of this race, they never come close to that cut off figure anyway with generally about one hundred cars actually showing up. This year it was reported that ninety three cars signed in to race although I only saw ninety on the track and for qualifying but it is indeed a big building and that elusive ninety third car may still be trying to navigate his way to the track through the maze required to get on to the actual racing surface.
Many of the top names in the sport are signed in to race along with a number of drivers who you will only see race here unless you travel to the far corners of this country to watch Late Model racing.
Along with the Late Models, the Modifieds will also be racing again this year. However, unlike the first two years of this event, instead of the Modifieds also allowed to enter up to the one fifty threshold, this year the Modifieds, in order to race, must have received and invitation to the event. This way they kept the numbers down to a more workable level. And the field is outstanding, with virtually every car on hand driven by top notch drivers and again, many of the biggest names in Modified racing are on hand to compete.
And the reason that the Modified numbers have been limited is that the mighty Midgets have been added to the program for this year. They also are racing on an invitation only basis and along with the Modifieds, fifty four of them are on hand to race also. The Midget list of drivers may be the most impressive of all three fields of cars, as there are but a handful of the best in the country that aren't in St. Louis to race this weekend. So, if it is big name drivers you want to see driving in a variety of different looking kinds of dirt race cars, this is the place to be this weekend.
Once again, a fifth mile track(or so they say) has been laid down in the bowels of the America's Dome and the track seems, in the preliminary action, to race much like it did last year. More fortified infield markers have been placed this year to keep the drivers from cutting the corners and the markers they have this year are going to hurt much more if they are hit than previous years. Just the first night action saw several bumpers and a few front ends laid waste by trying to get too low in the corners.
There will be a few drivers that try to run multiple classes this year with Bobby Pierce picking up rides in both the Modifieds and Midgets to go along with his Late Model ride while Tim McCreadie has a Midget ride to go along with his Late Model. Randy Timms will be running both Late Models and Mods, but with his own personal cars.
The first day is always one to test the patience of even the hard core fan and again that was the case this year. Lots of laps put down on the racing surface but very little actual racing over a long day at the track. For those tough fans who find their seat as soon as the gates open at 2 pm, they would be looking forward to eight hours of on and off activity, with only seven races actually contested during that eight hour period. For those of us that opt, of our own choosing, to hit the pits a few hours before that time, it makes for an even longer day. And as long as the format using the age old archaic method of qualifying everything that moves and then starting the races straight up is used, this will not change.
Late Model and Modified drivers better be on their "A game" however, as they get a total of three hot laps before they are expected to qualify. For some reason, the Midgets were given special status and they had three full sessions of hot laps per car, even though their part of the program doesn't even start until Friday. I get the feeling that management has a special "soft spot" for the Midgets and I get the impression that their part of the program will only increase as the years go by, to the exclusion of perhaps one of the classes that we are seeing this weekend,but that is only me talking.
The first cars hit the track about 3 pm and it was just before 5 pm before the qualifying actually started. Both the Late Models and Modifieds qualified three cars at a time and the whole process, while lengthy, did come off without many hitches. Both classes split the field into two groups and the fast qualifiers in the Late Models were Tanner English and Pierce while the Modifieds saw Chris Arnold and Nick Hoffman turn quick time. One of the biggest surprises was when Scott Bloomquist had fuel pressure problems during qualifying and his very slow laps will put him at the back of a heat race on Friday afternoon, which should make for some interesting racing to be sure. Several of the other potential challengers also didn't qualify the best and this perhaps is natures way of saying that we should be either inverting the lineups to make things more interesting or just drawing a pill and then letting passing points draw the "cream to the top", so to speak.
The Late Model Race of Champions was the first on track activity that counted and that race hit the track about 8 pm. Rusty Schlenk, in the famed Rayburn entry, led all the way to win that contest as he drew away from an early battle with Jonathan Davenport to get the win.
The night concluded with six Modified heat races that qualified the top five in each race for Friday's twin main events, of which the top four of those will make the big show on Saturday night. While their weren't many yellow flags in the Mod heats, the first few saw the drivers pretty much line up and follow each other but as the races continued, the track started to widen out and the drivers moved up the track, with much more side by side racing in the last couple of events. That's much the way it happened last year too, and as more racing takes place, the track seems to get wider, the inside lane starts to slow down and the outside becomes more competitive. Lots of spectators stuck it out until the end of the night and then the crowd was large as people headed for the pit area.
Friday night will be a huge day and night of racing with a full program of both Late Models and Midgets(of course including Midget qualifying) with double features in each class, along with Last Chance races and double features for the Modifieds. This will set the fields for the big features on Saturday for all three classes, except for a few more Last Chance races on Saturday.
No comments:
Post a Comment