Friday night, May 10th, the fans on hand at the Mississippi Thunder Speedway near Fountain City Wisconsin witnessed what I will label as one of the biggest upsets and most shocking results of the entire racing season, despite the fact that for a number of tracks in the upper Midwest area, their seasons have yet to begin.
Running against a quality field of Late Models, young Jake Timm, in his first night behind the wheel of a Late Model, stunned the field of drivers and everyone assembled to watch when he led from start to finish to win the forty lap feature race for the Dirt Kings Late Model series. It was one of the biggest surprises I have seen in a very long time.
Timm, who is a young veteran in his early twenties in the Modified class, is the son of Bob Timm, who owns Mississippi Thunder Speedway and was a long time outstanding driver himself in particularly the Modified class but he did also spend a considerable amount of time behind the wheel of a Late Model, particularly when there were more tracks in southern Minnesota that ran the class on a regular basis.
Earlier this year, when I ran into Bob down at Humboldt Kansas as he was helping out Jake with his Modified, I congratulated Bob for bringing the Late Models back to MTS. While he runs a weekly USRA Late Model class at his track, they have both very limited motor and suspension rules and are not to the level of the Late Models he was bringing in. I told him that even though he was a "Modified guy," I was glad to see that he was bringing back the Late Models. He gave a grin and told me that he was still a "Late Model" guy too! In fact, later this Summer, over the fourth of July holiday, he is bringing back the WISSOTA Wollak Construction Challenge Series for a doubleheader to his track that should be a very successful outing for him too.
Well, I didn't realize that he still liked Late Models to the point that he would go out and get one for his son to race! The car, an MB Custom, was previously raced by Cade Dillard and they had MB put a new front stub on the car and update it and they just got the car on Tuesday of this week! Jake ran a practice session and was not good so they completely went over the car and early this afternoon, Jake had another practice session at the track before anyone arrived and the car was much better. I guess that is the benefit of owning a race track.!
In any event, a fine thirty car field arrived for the Late Model portion of the show on Friday. The Dirt Kings Tour is in I believe, their third year of existence and they have put together a nice schedule of races that are held primarily in eastern Wisconsin. With only two tracks in the eastern part of the state that race Late Models weekly, the Dirt Kings have allowed Late Model racing to stay healthy in that part of the state and have allowed them to travel to tracks that normally don't run Late Models. This trip to MTS was their farthest trip to the western side of the state and as usual, their regulars supported the event as they have always done and no matter where the Dirt Kings race, they usually are guaranteed twenty five to thirty cars. Their visit to MTS saw them connect with some of the WISSOTA cars from the western part of the state as Red Cedar Speedway actually swapped their WISSOTA Late Models for the MTS USRA Limited Late Models for the night and that added strong runners like Jimmy Mars, John Kaanta, Pat Doar, AJ Diemel, Don Shaw, James Giossi and Jesse Glenz to the field Friday, making things much tougher for the Dirt Kings regulars.
Timm showed his strength early, making a daring outside pass on Glenz near the end of a heat race that allowed him to garner enough passing points to make the redraw and he redrew the pole for the main event. He got the jump on Brett Swedberg at the start and took off like a rocket. After being a little choppy in the heats due to all the rain of late, the track crew graded and freshened the track for the main and it was black, slick and smooth from top to bottom for the feature races. The high side was the fastest way and Timm rode right up by the wall as he moved out to a good sized lead.
The race had only one yellow flag, with twenty two laps complete so Timm had to deal with a considerable amount of lapped traffic but he handled it masterfully, weaving high and low on the track as needed to make the passes.
The restart following the lone yellow was a concern but he pulled away once again and even though Mars passed two cars following yellow to take second, he basically had nothing for Timm as Jake continued to open up his lead. He had one near death experience in turn three when he got too high and clipped the wall, but he fortunately didn't knock off his spoiler and got back into his groove.
At the finish, he had a lapped car and several car lengths between himself and Mars. Of course, with his father owning the track and the family's well known presence in the local area, the victory lane celebration was a rousing one of epic per portions, and just as it should have been. It was indeed a race for the ages.
Mars finished second and that alone is quite a story too. Last Friday night he was involved in a grinding crash at Red Cedar when as a stalled car on the track he was rear ended at high speed in a violent way. It was first thought that the car was totaled but according to Paul Gilberts, the car owner and Mars' father-in-law, they were very lucky just where the other car hit and while there was damage, the frame was undamaged and needless to say, they had it back on the track this weekend and running fine.
Veteran Lance Matthees had a strong run in his first race of 2019 as he started and finished third, ahead of Dirt Kings regulars Swedberg and defending champion Nick Anvelink. WISSOTA spec engines were under the hoods of the top three finishers with winner Timm sporting a Tesar engine they purchased for $6,000 that had been freshened by Buckbuilt, which is one of the Timms' businesses.
There was other racing on the card Friday night. Three USRA sanctioned classes were also running, the Modifieds, B Mods and Hobby Stocks. What was good was the fact that they did eliminate a few of their weekly classes, thus making the show just a bit more manageable and yet still highlighting the local drivers to the visiting fans.
The Modified feature saw veteran driver Brad Waits lead from start to finish in the twenty five lap main He was challenged in the early going by Adam Hensel with Lucas Schott and A.J. Diemel eventually working their way to the front and try and catch Waits.
A late yellow set up a five lap sprint to the finish but Waits was not to be denied and he pulled away for the win. A surprising entry was that of Ryan Gustin who, with no where to race this weekend, is expected to spend his time in southern Minnesota the rest of the weekend running. However, he had a lousy heat race and started deep in the field for the main. He did make a strong charge as he passed a number of cars but he was too deep to make a dent on the front runners and ended up seventh.
The B Mod field was down just a bit on this night but they still had enough cars for two solid heats and a main and their feature race was a good three car battle. Taking advantage of the draw/redraw used weekly at MTS, last week's feature winner Taylor Skauge started on the pole but he couldn't get away from Alex Williamson, who rode the banking and challenged lap after lap with Skauge getting up the track down the chutes and blocking Williamson's advances.
Williamson, who is of that rare breed that runs weekly in two different sanctioning bodies with the same car that he just adjusts, continued to pressure Skauge lap after lap. Meanwhile, Dan Hovden moved in using the low groove and now Skauge really had his hands full.
A spin caused the lone yellow with five laps to go and when Skauge moved up the track in turn one on the green to block Williamson, Hovden drove right by him on the bottom and then proceeded to pull away for the surprising win.
Rounding out the program were the Hobby Stocks. This class is in its third year I believe at MTS and has really started to take off. Despite the fact that there is no other track in the area that runs this class, their numbers have now grown to two dozen and the quality of the cars has improved greatly in the last year or so. They do look a little different than most Hobby Stocks though, as they run racing tires which I don't think other Hobby Stock tracks allow and they truly look more like Stock Cars than Hobby Stocks.
Their feature race was yellow plagued on this night with six of them during the fifteen lap main. A good battle for the lead saw Steve Dwyer trying to hold off Dustin Gulbranson who towed all the way from South Dakota to race on this night. However, they got together and Dwyer went spinning into the infield. Both cars were sent to the back and Jay Mensink inherited the lead which he held to the finish, despite heavy pressure from Chris Hovden. A number of the cars that race at MTS is the support cars are Iowa based entries from the Decorah area under the same sanctioning as MTS.
I also saw one other thing on Friday that I probably won't again for quite some time. The wall that lines MTS is made out of Jersey Barricades that are stacked together and twice tonight the came barrier, on the back chute, was hit by a car and tipped over and had to be put back up by a wrecker. Weird indeed.
It was a good night of racing at MTS and the Late Models shined in their return. There was a solid crowd of spectators on hand so it was a win-win for management, actually in more ways then they could have probably imagined.
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