Under sunny and warm but extremely windy conditions, the 2019 racing season in the state of Nebraska kicked off on Friday night, April 5th with the annual "Spring Thaw" at the I-80 Speedway near Greenwood.
This year the Spring Thaw featured the Nebraska 360 Sprints in a full show of heats and features along with the full show for the Sport Compacts. The Late Models participated in a pair of qualifying feature races with all cars getting to run a main event and the top four from each main automatically locked in for Saturday night's big finale.
I was a little concerned early when the race cars seemed quite slow in arriving and I was wondering if there would be enough of them on hand to put on a decent show. However, when they finally started to arrive, they rolled in at a quick pace and the final count showed forty one Late Models, twenty eight Sprints and twenty nine Sport Compacts. Drivers from at least five states were on hand for the show and except for another big Sprint Car show in Kansas, they reported that there would have been a number more in that class also.
Late Model racing looks to be in a healthy position in Nebraska with lots of local cars ready to go for opening night and surely a few that weren't ready for opening night. There were also some fresh faces in the class, something that is hard to find in many regions with this class. Dylan Smith was one of those as it was reported that he had last been in a Late Model in 2014 but he would be a strong competitor on this night in Al Humphrey's car. Scott Carlson and Nick Deal are both former Modified drivers now racing Late Models and Deal would also be prominent before the night was over. Some visitors on hand to race with the SLMR regulars included Curt Schroeder, Jeremy Grady and Paul Conrad(with a new Black Diamond chassis) from Iowa and Scott Ward and Gary Brown Jr from South Dakota.
I talked to Ward before the show who tipped that his daughter Morgan is going to race a few Late Model shows before this season is over and then race for WISSOTA national Rookie of the Year in 2020 using a Rocket chassis while Scott is running his WISSOTA motor with a plate in his new Club 29 car that previously was used for open motor racing.
The Late Model format was a different one on Friday with cars group qualifying in batches of five. They would be receiving points for their qualifying efforts much like Knoxville does in September. The cars then ran heat races with the top four in each heat inverted by their times. Points were also given for heat race efforts and the totals were used to line up the twin features, straight up by points. Along with racing for purse money, the top four in each feature would also be locked into the main event on Saturday night.
The time trial portion of the program proved to be the only Achilles Heel of the night as the transponders from several of the cars weren't working and a few cars had to make multiple attempts before they finally got an official qualifying time, which really slowed things down. In fact, Kyle Berck, the defending champion of this series, never did achieve a qualifying time and had to start tail back in a heat race. It was a tough night for Berck who was a late arrival(as he is most of the time), and he was chasing his set up most of the night.
The twin Late Model features couldn't have been more different. The first one had only one yellow and every single car finished the race while the second one saw crash after crash including one right on the front chute just at the drop of the green.
The first qualifying feature saw a great early battle between Smith and Tad Pospicil with them trading slide jobs on each end of the track. Then Deal moved up to challenge them and we had a great three car battle for the lead. The only slow down of the race was when Brown Jr lost a motor on lap six. On the restart, Smith started to assert his superiority and began to pull away. Meanwhile the race for second remained a good one right to the finish. The big surprise was in post race tech where Smith was disqualified for an undisclosed violation which I will attempt to ascertain on Saturday. This elevated Deal to the win over Pospicil with Cory Zeitner and Brian Kosiski also locked in.
The second qualifying feature got off to a terrible start when the second and third row started rubbing on each other just as they took the green. A big clog developed on the front chute with car after car plowing into the wad and two cars going over. Poor Conrad had his brand new car upside down along with the car of Jim Johnson with both appearing to have received significant damage. A couple other cars also suffered damage, made pit stops and returned to the contest. This race would be stopped three more times for spins, the most significant of which saw Ben Schaller, in a qualifying spot, spin his way out of the show. A dominating performance was put on by Andrew Kosiski in his new MB Customs as he ran away from the field. Also qualifying were Josh Leonard, Bill Leighton Jr and Jason O'Brien. Everyone else will try to qualify on Saturday.
Four heats and a B Feature set the field for the twenty five lap Sprint main. Fifteen year old Brendan Mullen from Grand Forks sat on the pole and while he faded back in this race, he showed plenty of "moxie" earlier and will be driver to be paid attention to. With Jack Dover on the outside pole, it would have seemed that this was his race to lose.
However, after battling Mullen and then taking the lead, he was soon challenged by Matt Juhl. Juhl found a fast line around the track and blew past Dover to take over the lead and then Dover suddenly shut down and pulled into the infield. Justin Henderson worked his way up from the fourth row and with several yellows, was able to close on Juhl but on every restart, Matt would pull away despite Justin's best efforts.
Juhl crossed the line with a comfortable margin of victory over Henderson, Jason Martin, Seth Brahmer and Chris Martin.
The Sport Compacts wrapped up the evening and would have to say they did a great job. Twenty of them started the main and there were only two minor spins to slow the action. Steffen Oaks started in the front row and pulled away from the field as there seemed to be no challenge for the lead, but behind him, there was a great battle of about a half dozen cars battling hard and swapping positions on every lap. They did a great job of racing back and forth and putting on a fine show, even on this big four tenth mile oval.
Oaks ran away for the win and was followed by Drake Bohlmeyer, Terry Tritt, Dustin Grant and Curtis Miller.
The final checkered flag waved just at 11 pm with the show running just over three hours after the transponder snafus were ironed out and qualifying completed. The track was in great shape for opening night and the drivers were racing all over the banking. The crowd, by the way, looked very large for the opening night of action. I would expect even more to be on hand for Saturday night's finale.
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