One of the blessings(and I suppose banes also) is the weekly racing scene once the season gets moving into high gear. We are nearing the halfway point of the racing season(which I always consider to be the fourth of July but probably isn't totally accurate) and you never know from night to night just who and how many drivers are going to show up for the weekly shows with nothing special attached. Stuart International Speedway was hosting their regular weekly show on Wednesday night, June 26th. There was nothing special about the night, just an ordinary race night wedged in between a special event carried out a couple weeks ago and another special coming up next Tuesday. It was a hot, steamy Wednesday night with a holiday looming next mid week and a ton of racing to be had during that week. A good night to take a night off, right?
Well, If I would have assumed that I would have been totally wrong as one of the strongest car counts in both numbers and quality for a regular weekly program assembled on Wednesday night in the cramped Stuart pits for the racing program. Solid car counts were on hand in all five classes with both open wheel classes needing three heat races to do their qualifying. New drivers showed up in all five classes and the Modifieds boasted such solid additions as Hunter Marriott, Jeremy Zorn and Ethan Dotson while Nick Roberts and Ricky Thornton Jr also came back to play after being absent for a few weeks. In all, the set up was there for some good racing action with some fresh faces and that's what we got to see on Wednesday.
But the "long haul" award of the night went to Australia's Frank Packer who just flew in earlier this week for his fourth annual racing visit to the States. He finished up his Sport Mod and Wednesday night would be his first race of 2019 in America. He plans to stay in the USA through Super Nationals but said that he will limit his racing to three nights per week and plans to race just Stuart, Marshalltown and Boone. He's going to do some other things besides race this time around and in fact, will miss some racing next week as he has a camping trip planned to beautiful Wisconsin, and not that far from where I hang my hat. And it will be gorgeous up there this time of year. Just bring the repellent!
Frank was sporting a new car purchased from Harris Auto Racing and in fact has purchased the truck and trailer that he borrowed last year from them. Everything gets stored at the shops of his good friends from Central Iowa Truck Repair, where he stays for the summer. Frank has started his own racing supply business in Australia called Kenko, which he was sporting as one of his sponsors on his car. Frank ran a crate motor last year but that was sold along with the race car and he now has a "built" motor in the car. However, the dyno numbers came back not good and he is worried about being under powered with this car, along with being a bit rusty as his season starts. Later on, he did finish a bit far back in the pack on his opening night, but at least he didn't tear up his new car like many did, at least until most people get to see the car at least once. It took a few minutes to decipher him, as I have to admit that he has quite a heavy dialect but I also learned a long about Australia in a few short minutes. Hopefully I will run into Frank again along the way during the rest of the Summer.
Although I didn't get a chance to talk to him tonight(he was busy on the race track after overnight rains made his job tougher), I learned that promoter Mike VanGenderen was "concussed" after his violent crash last Saturday night at Boone. He hit the wall backwards so hard that it bent his seat and steering sector and destroyed much of the car. He hit his head on the roll bars hard enough to break his helmet! They have gotten the car stripped down and it will likely go back to Harris to see if it is salvageable, but for the time being he is out of racing. With his special events coming up, he likely would not have had much time to race anyway, but the irony was that they were just getting their car to run better when it got wrecked.
Hall of Fame voting was underway Wednesday with all ticket and pit pass holders getting one vote for their Hall of Fame candidate. The results will likely be announced perhaps as early as next week. MVG started a Hall of Fame when he was running the show at Osky and has now done the same here at Stuart. For the longest time, most tracks were very negligent about honored those people most responsible for their tracks success but now most tracks have gotten on the band wagon and have started Halls of Fame for their ovals.
The track had a little bit different character to it on Wednesday. Overnight rains had drenched the place and while it eventually became a sunny day on Wednesday, it was a humid one and that held the moisture in the ground close enough to the surface that when they started racing on it, it came back up. The track was more tacky than most nights and was significantly faster and did have a bit of a chop to it. Not that it affected the racing to any degree, but it did make the racing just a bit different. There was more speed in the corners and it did make the three wide racing we had been seeing just a bit harder to do.
A very interesting statistic was produced early in the going Wednesday. The twelve heat races for the IMCA classes were clicked off in forty five minutes flat, and with not a single yellow flag to slow the action, despite all the races being hotly contested with starting spots in the mains on the line. Wow, that was very impressive. Things would not go quite as smooth in the main events, and I suppose that we should have expected that.
Stock Cars were up first for their twenty lap main and it was Keith Simmons the early leader. He maintained the top spot for a number of laps before being overtaken by Jeremy Gettler with Danial Hilsabeck putting the heat on him. Meanwhile, Buck Schafroth was moving up after starting eighth, and when Chad Legere was turned around, it triggered the only yellow of the race. The restart proved the downfall of Gettler as Schafroth drove around him and took over the lead, a lead he would maintain the rest of the race for his third win here already this season. Gettler and Hilsabeck would trail.
Sport Mods would take to the track next and with twenty one of them with various levels of speed and experience in the field, it looked to be problematic, and indeed, that would be exactly the case. They barely got the green flag before a car got sideways in turn one, turned another one around and the field came piling in on that car, which triggered quite a pileup that took several minutes to sort out. The green came back out and both the first and second place cars of Daniel Bauldler and Colton Nelson spun and we were under yellow again. Eventually, the yellows exceeded the four limit and the restarts went to single file to keep things moving, truly a restart format that I prefer over double file restarts anyway.
All the yellows and resulting pit stops really shuffled the field and Chase Rudolf, who started twelfth, suddenly found himself right at the front of the pack. Soon he made the pass to take over the lead and despite a solid challenge from Dusty Masolini and Tyler Inman, he held on for the win. I'm told that he is leading the national point standings right now(in large part from his early season trips to Arizona where he beat on the competition) but the win certainly had to have helped his cause.
The Hobby Stock feature was a two car battle between the Madden brothers. Chuck Jr took the early lead from the outside pole and led for the majority of the race. Meanwhile, Corey was storming up from the fifth row as he showed great speed on the tacky track running the high side. He was flying through the competition and when the sole yellow of the race was triggered by a collision in turn two, he found himself right behind his brother. They had a good battle for the top spot with Chuck Jr hanging on for several laps but eventually Corey was able to ease past near the end, and he would hold on for a narrow win over Chuck Jr and Adam Ayers.
Nineteen Modifieds took the green flag for an intense main event that saw only one yellow for a corner tire kicked up on the track. Arizona transplant Austin Kuehl lead the early laps as he was setting a blistering pace. David Brown moved in to challenge him while Hunter Marriott and Ricky Thornton Jr charged up from the seventh and sixth rows respectively. Both were really flying to the front and they provided great action as they moved around the track with Marriott favoring the low line while Thornton Jr was working more up the track.
Eventually Marriott would catch the leader and along with Jesse Dennis, they would have a great three car battle for the lead. Kuehl hung on for a couple laps with Marriott beside him but eventually the Missouri drivers would edge past into the lead. Marriott, on "summer break" from the USMTS, is back catching the specials now around the holiday and looks to have lost none of his IMCA prowess. Dennis would eventually get past Kuehl and that's how the top three would finish. Thornton Jr would join the battle near the end of the race, only to issue a big puff of smoke from the back of his car and quickly dive to the pit area. The Brown family had a big battle for fourth with Kyle prevailing.
The Sport Compacts would wrap up the evening and they would still find the track to have lots of "bite." In fact, perhaps just a bit too much. James Reeves was leading the feature after starting on the pole and was in a ferocious battle to hold off Mitchell Bunch for the lead. Unfortunately, he pushed so hard into the tacky corners that he rolled a front tire off the rim and was done for the event. this turned the lead over to Bunch and he drove home for an easy win over Tyler Fiebelkorn and Colton Garside. Several cars also suffered the fate of losing a left front tire on the tacky track and a couple got a surprise on top of that. The jumps for the Friday night "Fun Friday" show had already been laid down inside the track and when a couple of the cars that lost tires tried to pull off the track, they inadvertently hit the bumps, sending them for another ride!
The first "issue" of the season may have cropped up on this night. The work area for replacing flat tires etc is on the high side of turn four and actually right on the track. This is not an ideal situation as once a crew and a jacked up car are sitting there on the track, the race obviously can not restart, no matter how long it takes. Even if they disqualify a car for taking too many laps to get a tire charged or other work done, they still have to wait for that car to move before restarting the race. In the Stock Car feature, we must have sat for twenty slow laps around the track by the field while we waited for the crew for one car to arrive, and then change a tire at less than blazing speed. This was later repeated by a car in the Sport Mod feature. This is an unnecessary hold up and one that will exploited by other teams if something isn't changed.
Stuart Speedway is "land challenged" no doubt, with the track, pits and spectator parking all jammed in a tiny area that has more hills and valleys than level space. It also has just a tiny infield but there must be found a space either off the track surface or in the infield to be the "hot pit" so that this doesn't happen again because there is nothing more frustrating for the fan that to have a car trigger a yellow by slowing with a flat tire, and then holding up the whole show while we wait for them to change that tire. And especially so when you are running a midweek show where time is always of the essence.
And I think the first order of business once this racing season is over is to somehow completely redesign the pit area. Every week it is the same old thing as crews try to squeeze their rigs into the parking spaces available and crews get mad when they can't find places to park and other crews get made when their reserved spots are taken and cars are forced to be moved when they are already in the process of working on them. It is drama every week with near fights breaking out on several occasions and just not a comfortable way of starting out the night. Certainly there must be some teams that just by pass the track because they don't want to deal with the "drama." It is tiresome and needs addressing.
Even though it seemed like the Stock Car and Sport Mod features took an eternity with the wrecks and yellow flag drama, the final checkered flag of the night still waved by 10:10 pm which is not that bad. Much thanks for the smooth heat races which helped out the situation.
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