Friday night, January 11th was round three of the thirteen annual Wild West Shootout at the F K Rod Ends Arizona Speedway and for the first time ever in the history of this event, a driver dipped into the rich bonus money offered as Bobby Pierce won his third straight main event during this Winter series. With the tough competition that this series draws, the bonus money seems like it would be hard to earn, and indeed it has been for the years that it has been offered with to this point, no one able to harvest any of the extra money. That is, until Friday night when Pierce cracked open the bank for an extra ten grand with his third straight win and he is now half way home to the quarter million dollars on the line if he can win three more feature races here.
Friday night is typically the night when the car count is one of the highest of the entire six races series and so it was again this year. A total of eighteen drivers made their first appearance of the series so far and both swelled the pits and increased the competition level. With forty eight X Mods, fifty one Mods and forty six Late Models, it was the largest car count of the week so far with the Modified car count even topping any night from last year's run.
The difficulty level in the Mod class was also ratcheted up with Kenny Wallace, the Gallardos, Jimmy Ray, Alex Stanford and Zane Devilbiss making things that much tougher to both make the main and to indeed walk home as the winner. With that being said, both of the open wheel classes saw first time winners to go along with the sweeping Pierce.
As far as updates on cars being wrecked from Wednesday night and efforts to repair them, here's what shook out. Two out of the three cars that flipped were back in action on Friday. Both Casey Arneson and Kody Scholpp got their Mods fixed and both made the main event on Friday night. In fact, Scholpp made one of the best drives of the night, coming from twenty second spot to finish sixth in the main.
However, the X Mod of Adam Unrau, the other car to flip on Wednesday, was literally junked. They stripped off all the usable parts and pieces, picked up the frame and literally threw it in the trash back behind the track so If you're looking for a starter car for the Mods, there's one all waiting for you!
In other moves for Friday night action, Don Shaw gave up on his new car and rolled out the car that had served him so well last year. After a rocky start when he lost a driveshaft in time trials, he was able to rebound and qualify for the main. Ricky Weiss also rolled out a second car to use on Friday and he finished just out of the top five. Dustin Strand, who finished a smoking second in the Modifieds on Wednesday did indeed lose a cylinder that wrecked a piston so he was on motor number two on Friday. Unfortunately, just as he took the lead in a Modified heat, he had more motor trouble and his night was done.
With bigger car counts, management did go to a double B feature qualifying format but they still only ran four heats in each class. That made for a dozen or more cars in every qualifying race of the night and with only eight laps and passing points being used for the open wheel classes, it makes the heat races pretty brutal and every driver's mentality is to go to the front now which results in some wild action but also some torn up equipment. In fact, the double wrecker tows had to be used twice in the heats alone.
Pierce's win tonight was his toughest challenge of the week so far. He actually had dropped back to fourth early in the race after starting on the pole but he was able to fight his way back past Jimmy Mars and Hudson O'Neal and then set his sights on the front running Kyle Beard. Beard was having a great run and looking strong but Pierce gradually reeled him in as the race ran a number of consecutive green flag laps.
Beard's undoing was when he came up on a lapped car down the back chute and he couldn't decide whether to go high or low around the slower car. Eventually he dropped to the low side but he killed his momentum and Pierce stormed around the banking and had just enough room to squeeze past on the high side and take over the lead. Once he got in front he was able to stretch his advantage to take the win over Beard, O'Neal, Brandon Sheppard and a fading Mars.
Rodney Sanders has started out a little bit show this week but he got things going again in a positive direction Friday night with his first win of the week. He and Ricky Thornton Jr battled in the early going as they swapped the lead back and forth until Thornton Jr's car lost power and he was done for the night. There were several restarts during the race and on each one Darrell Nelson would challenge but Sanders would fight him off each time. Nelson had to replace the rear end in his car after breaking it on Wednesday night but he again ran strong.
Most spectacular was Tyler Wolff who started in the eighth row and in no time at all was in the top five and still going forward. However, he lost control and spun in turn one with a trip to the tail of the field his reward. However, that didn't slow him down and once again he made a strong drive back up through the field. He made a spectacular move down the back chute between Nelson and Devilbiss to take over second and he maintained that position to the finish. Nelson, Matt Leer, with his best run so far with his new MB and Devilbiss completed the top five.
The WISSOTA domination of the X Mods was finally ended with a strong run by Josh Cain who led nearly the entire event for the win. The point champion at Las Cruces, Cain started on the outside of the front row and after a brief battle with Lance Schill, took over the lead and maintained it through several yellow flags. Schill, who put the front end of his car back together after clobbering the wall on Wednesday night was finally rewarded with his first solid finish.
Things went from back to worse for WISSOTA two time champion Sketter Estey. He was battling for second when he hooked a bump in turn four that rolled his right rear tire off the wheel and in the resulting slide, his car turned over on its roof where it was then clipped by another car passing by. It was a scary looking wreck but Sketter was OK. However, his title winning car from last year did not look good and his week of racing may have ended prematurely. As the defending champion of the big B Mod race in Humboldt, he will want to either get this car fixed correctly or perhaps put a new one together.
Cole Searing made a charge from twelfth to get to third and it looked like he might get his third straight win too, but once he got to third, he couldn't challenge any farther. In fact, he had to fight off a determined challenge by Austin Ellis to even claim that spot with Steve Muilenburg, from twentieth, to complete the top five.
Besides Estey, Jonathan Olmscheid and Austin Kuehl both went for wild rides as the open wheel cars had another tough night of it and the numerous wrecks drove the show seriously late into the evening; much later than programs here typically run.
Tomorrow will be a grind for drivers, crews, fans and track workers with a doubleheader event slated. This rare combination, the result of a rain out last Sunday, will see the first round of racing begin at Noon with the evening show to commence as quickly as possible so as to beat off the chance of more rain coming in on Saturday night.
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