With well over one hundred cars on hand in the pits in the four divisions racing at the Southern Stampede here at the Southern Oklahoma Speedway in Ardmore and some very fine balance throughout the divisions, the last thing one would expect would be to see repeat winners from Thursday night again on Friday. However, just to show how wrong my thinking would be on that subject, three of the four divisions saw repeat winners from Thursday night with only the Stock Car division producing a new winner.
Jason Hughes, Jared Baird and Trent Gibby all repeated wins from Thursday night with only Kansas' Kyle Pfeifer becoming a first time winner for the weekend.
Car counts were up across the board in all four classes with the Modifieds again topping the charts as forty eight of them signed in to race. Again, it was just the Modifieds and Sport Mods that needed B Features however, with the Sport Mods split up into four heats on Friday instead of the very large three heats of the previous night. The Mods again ran five heats with only the top two moving on so their B Features were more like mini features with nearly twenty cars in each one.
There was not a lot of crashing and banging during Thursday nights program so the amount of thrashing by race teams seemed relatively limited compared to some of the multi day specials we have seen. Probably the biggest news was the fact that local favorite William Gould, after having trouble on Thursday night was busy swapping motors in his Modified in the pits and he preformed the task rather quickly with time to spare before racing started on Friday night.
Rightfully so, everyone had a fit when Scott Bloomquist took his Late Model for a hot lap session on a busy highway while racing in Arizona this Spring. However, Ardmore had their own version of this on Friday afternoon when Sport Mod driver Colby Miller was seen barreling up and down busy highway 77 several times trying to get the miss out of his engine. Keep in mind that the two lane road that runs just to the East of the track is posted at 65 mph!
I am assuming that the race programs this weekend must be starting earlier than for their weekly shows or either that or a number of competitors had to return home after Thursday nights show and did live a distance from Ardmore as I can't remember an event before that saw so many of the racers arrive late for the action. There were literally tens of rigs pulling into the pits long after cut off had ended and in fact, some arrived several races into the night with at least a half dozen drivers not making their heats and either tailing a B Feature or starting in the back of a main. It was quite strange. Tomorrow they start even earlier but it will be a Saturday so we'll see what effect that makes.
Once again the race program ran off remarkably smooth with few yellow flags and while there were probably a few more fender benders than Thursday night, most were of the "rolling variety" in that they didn't trigger yellows. In fact, during the thirteen qualifying heat races, the yellow flag was waved just twice! I did observe tonight that there were several instances that could have triggered yellows but due to the one spin rule, drivers moved even though they found themselves the better part of a lap down. I so which that I could talk tracks in my home area to go to this rule as it does wonders for moving the shows along and keeping the program from dragging out. In fact, even though there were more races and cars on Friday night, the show got done even earlier than it did on Thursday with the final checkered flag waving just at 10 pm, which I think is something celebrated by everyone.
Eco Mods were up first for their nineteen car feature race with defending track champion Chad King, who was not on hand for Thursday's show, taking the early lead. However he didn't last in front for very long as he was soon overtaken by last night's winner Trent Gibby. Gibby was running the high side of the track and dominating until Chase Vineyard, who started sixteenth, started to move in on him. Vineyard had been working his way forward gradually as he made the low groove work and he was able to pull up beside Gibby several times but not able to make the pass. Eventually Gibby gave up on the high side and moved to the bottom to block and he was able to maintain the lead by several car lengths and go on for the win. Roy Tibbs was third with Mikel Wingate and Sean McKinney trailing.
Sixteen cars took the green for the Stock Car feature which went non stop, green to checkered. With Jeffrey Abbey on the outside pole, it looked like another repeat win was in the bag but pole starter Kyle Pfeifer thought otherwise. Wilth Abbey and Dean Abbey both pounding the cushion, Pfeifer worked the low side and as the top groove seemed to wear out for the Stockers, Pfeifer slowly but surely moved into the lead. It was a perfect example of "slow and steady" being the way to go. Eventually Dean Abbey moved into second and he continued to hammer the cushion but Pfeifer was not going to be caught. The Kansas driver mentioned in his post race interview that he was happy to just be racing as he had eight inches of snow on the ground in his home area. How well I know that feeling, multiplied three or four times over! Behind the Abbeys it was Kyle Falck and Tommy Fain.
While the Stock Car feature was won on the bottom lane, it was quite the opposite for the Sport Mods. Don Reid Jr started on the outside pole and quickly moved into the top spot. He looked strong up front but was challenged after a few laps by last night's winner Jared Baird. A lap six yellow proved to be Reid's undoing as he brought the field down slowly for the restart and then failed to cover the outside line and Baird blew right past him. And once in front, Baird motored away from the field as the race went nonstop after that and he built up nearly a straightaway lead. Meanwhile, Reid dropped back badly as Cory Williams moved into second and despite a good challenge for the spot, held on for second. behind them, it was Justin Whitehead, Tate Butler and Dustin Robinson.
Not only has Jason Hughes been very fast so far this week, he has also been extremely lucky. Both nights he has redraw to the front row of the Modified feature and that is huge against so many good cars. In fact, the front row tonight was the same as last night with Hughes and Jared Hoefelman, just in the opposite order. Hughes immediately took the lead and he built up a comfortable margin. And, just like last night, the driver on the move was Ricky Thornton Jr who on Friday started even deeper in the field than last night, as he took the green twelfth. However, he was quickly up to fourth and still charging as two early yellows bunched the field. After experimenting around, Hughes selected a line that was low in turns one and two and up the banking on the other end of the track. Thornton Jr made the big move to get by Rodney Sanders for second and then took off after Hughes. They were pretty even and Thornton Jr, recognizing that he would never pass if he ran the same line as the leader, tried the high side all the way around the track. He was able to maintain his distance, but never able to cut into the lead as Hughes drove home with a relatively comfortable margin, made just a bit tenuous by some lapped traffic at the end. Sanders finished third with Anthony Roth and Jeff Taylor, up from twentieth, the hard charger.
Like I said earlier, it was a very quick show and with the chance of rain moving in by late evening, something appreciated. For whatever reason the track didn't seem quite as good as it was on Thursday night and didn't clean off quite as well. The main groove got pretty pronounced and the fields tended to line up single file a bit more than they had on Thursday night. Still, it was a good show and I remain very impressed with how efficiently the program was run off.
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