Round two of the Wild West Shootout returned to the F K Rod Ends Arizona Speedway on Wednesday night, January 9th. Without the postponed Sunday race, it fills like it has been an eternity since the last race here and in many ways feels like the series opener all over again. Under partly cloudy skies and cool temperatures, the drivers assembled again for another three division program climaxed by twenty, twenty five and thirty lap features respectively.
Car counts for night two were thirty nine X Mods, forty Mods and forty five Late Models. While the X Mods numbers remain higher for the second race compared to last years rounds, the other two division remain slightly down from last year. Unlike most of the years past, the number of new drivers that showed up to start their rounds for the midweek show was considerably smaller with only six first time racers including just one in both the Late Models and X Mods. Actually, the Russ King prepped Late Model for Big Block Modified ace Mike Maresca has been on hand since last Saturday, waiting for the driver to make an appearance.
Track conditions were again fast but the issue of the bumpy corners still persisted. The first and second turns seem fine while the bumps continue on the other set of corners. They did move around a bit on Wednesday night though with some new ones appearing on the approach to turn four and while they are still there, it appears that the drivers have learned how to avoid them for the most part except for situations when they weren't able to avoid them. Mike Montgomery, who does the track prep for this series, has been working hard to rectify the situation but as they say, "Rome wasn't built in a day" and they continue to spend many hours doing track prep. A practice session slated for Thursday night may help to pound in the track too.
Let's discuss the Late Models first. As it does for most shows of its type, qualifying remains a paramount issue in having a successful night. With the fast cars starting up front in the heats, not putting down a good qualifying effort generally means a long night is ahead. Three of the four Late Model heat races were won right off the pole and of the sixteen available qualifying positions for the feature, only two were "stolen" by drivers not starting in the front two rows of each heat race. Therefore, while the X Mod and Mod heats have been scintillating with much passing and action, the Late Model heats have been high speed contests to get in line and follow each other around the track. While it can be said that the Late Model features have both produced some exciting racing when we have gotten to that point, one can only wonder what kind of action the Late Models could generate if they were allowed to run "mixed" up heats. Of course, this series started out with passing points in all classes back in the Tucson days, but a couple of "whiners" cried out loud enough and backed management into a corner that they were forced to change the rules and now of course, both of the biggest complainers no longer come out to Arizona anyway!
Pierce was again right on point from start to finish on Wednesday to earn his second feature win in a row. He qualified quickest for his heat, won that event and then redrew the outside pole for the main. After letting Chase Junghans get the jump on him for one lap. Pierce flew by for the lead and then led the remaining twenty nine laps in the nonstop contest. Brandon Overton moved into second and gradually reeled in the leader until he was within a couple of car lengths as the laps ran down.
He made a sliding attempt on the final lap but couldn't pull it off in turn one and then was the race as Pierce remained clean on the final circuit and drove home for the win. Amazingly, with the tough competition here, the top five finishing positions cars were the exact same five as on Saturday, although their finishing order was somewhat juggled.
As Pierce pointed out, now he is racing for fifteen grand to win on Friday night, as the bonus money starts to kick in for him if he can get to the three win plateau which only he has a chance at. Scott Bloomquist, a recipient of a wicked "slider" from Overton in the early going, fell back into the pack but then worked his way back up to third at the finish. Bloomquist has been trying to work the bottom groove of the track, along with a few others in an effort to make some passes, but again on Wednesday finally gave up and went to the cushion. I have been hearing from several drivers that the reconfigured corners have picked up the speeds but they are finding that the low groove is so flat that it is hard to pass down there and if everyone lines up along the cushion, it's a fast freight train but a freight train nevertheless.
Cade Dillard continues to impress in his MB Customs car while the stars of last year's show, Ricky Weiss and Don Shaw continue with their struggles. Weiss has been a mid pack finisher both nights while Shaw failed to even make the show on Wednesday.
You knew it wouldn't take Ricky Thornton Jr too long to figure out his new Modified and Wednesday night he made an early race pass on Tyler Peterson and then led the rest of the way for the win. There were numerous yellow flags in the race and that allowed Dustin Strand and Matt Gilbertson chances to catch up but on each green it was Thornton Jr who pulled away as he controlled the action to take the win.
Both Strand and Gilbertson were, however, noteworthy for their performance. Stand dropped a cylinder in his motor and it was making some bad noises and well as smoking heavily the last half of the race but somehow it hung together and he finished second. Earlier, Strand was electrifying the crowd as he came from tenth to second, utilizing a line through the corners that no one else thought to run and making it work very successfully.
Gilbertson proved that he is a master of both open wheel classes. Arriving in Arizona with just his helmet bag and no car, he caught a ride in Lance Schill's back up X Mod for Saturday's show and promptly finished a strong second in it. When Schill wrecked his own car on Saturday, he moved over to the car that Gilbertson had driven on Saturday for tonight's show. But being a man of many resources, he had his Modified trucked down to Arizona for tonight's show and Gilbertson was behind the wheel of that car tonight. Showing his moxie, he turned around and drove that car to a third place finish. The interesting thing is that Gilbertson was driving a WISSOTA legal Modified which means he was probably giving up a hundred horsepower to the open motors but he was still right there to challenge for the win.
A number of contenders didn't last until the checkered flag on Wednesday with Darrell Nelson, Rodney Sanders and Dereck Ramirez all dropping out with mechanical issues. Even worse, Saturday night's winner Casey Arneson, who fought through problems to even make the feature through the B, ended up going for a flip on the back chute after some cars got bottled up in front of him and he was launched into the infield and up and over.
The X Mod field seems remarkably balanced, yet for the second straight night it was South Dakota's Cole Searing who took the win. He came from the third row to challenge early and it probably didn't hurt that challengers Brock Gronwald, Scott Bintz and Schill all dropped out early with various issues. For Schill, it was the second straight race where he hurdled his X Mod into the concrete wall and this car, the one that Gilbertson drove on Saturday, was heavily damaged also. New Mexico's Josh Cain, probably tired that the WISSOTA cars have been stealing all the glory, made a concerted charge from eleventh to second but on an open track, he couldn't keep up with Searing. Jason VandeKamp had a strong run too as he claimed the third position.
Only one more car than half the field completed the X Mod feature as unlike Saturday, there was much damage in both the open wheel classes. Many cars were dealing with major damage and there will be a lot of teams working hard tomorrow to get their cars back on the track for Friday night. In fact, there were three flips on Wednesday night as along with Arneson's wreck, the Mod of Kody Scholpp and the X Mod of Adam Unrau were both involved in flips with much damage to both and the two Canadians were treated rather rudely.
In an effort to speed up the show which is a big consideration for the midweek shows particularly due to neighbor complaints, all the Mods and X Mods were combined into just one B Feature in each class. This proved to be a big mistake as both events were caution plagued which dragged out the length of each but of greater concern, resulted in a high number of torn up cars. One particularly hates to see cars getting wrecked so early in the series which is both expensive and potentially can end a team's participation artificially early.
It was reported that the Wednesday night crowd was the biggest in the event's history which is a positive sign. Certainly there seems to be a lot of fans following the series this year and the fact that the Sunday show was dampened may have caused some people that might normally skip the midweek show to get their racing "fix" tonight.
From now on, things get very serious and perhaps more work than fun as over the course of the coming days, there will be four full shows of racing to be completed in just over forty eight hours. Drivers and crews will be stressed the rest of the way to keep their equipment upright and operational.
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