Friday, March 18, 2022

Rain Wins the Opening Round of the Southern Stampede

 Returning to a track where I haven't been for a couple years, on Thursday, March 19th, I was on hand at the Southern Oklahoma Speedway in Ardmore for the opening night of three straight evenings of racing for the IMCA Southern Stampede. Racing for three straight nights would be the IMCA Modifieds, Stock Cars and Southern Sport Mods with nice payoffs for all three classes on all three nights. 

The Southern Oklahoma Speedway sits just South of the city of Ardmore on a busy sixty five mile per hour state highway but right across the highway from the track the railroad tracks run. And this is one busy rail line as trains are constantly moving both North and South along it. Even announcer Jerry VanSickle commenting on the trains going by so often and I am in agreement with him that there is something fascinating about rail traffic, especially to me from an area where there are absolutely no trains any more. 

When I was a kid, we used to live right across a dirt road from a busy rail line where both freight trains and passenger trains would run by very frequently. Most of the engineers knew my family so when they approached our place, they would blow the train horn to alert us. We would run down to the edge of the road and would wave at the train crew and they would wave back.  And on late nights laying in bed, I could here the train horn blow at the crossing a mile down the road and could always time just how long it was going to be before the train roared past out house. So when I see trains and hear then grinding away on the tracks, it always reminds me of a simpler time. 

But I digress. As I walked into the pits for the first time this week, I was temporarily confused, thinking that I had perhaps taking a wrong turn as was someplace entirely different than I was supposed to be. In point of fact, the first eight cars that I saw and wrote on my list were all from the great state of Iowa with both Mods and Stock Cars on hand. They were on hand to enjoy some early season racing and perhaps get away from the tv, where later the Hawkeyes would lay the biggest egg of the early rounds of the NCAA basketball tourney. But that is another story. 

Earlier as I was walking the grounds, kind of getting the lay of things, J-Van yelled hello to me from the tower where they were getting things set up. He gets to about as many races as I do. Not sure if that is a good thing or perhaps a sign of mass insanity!

The afternoon of race car prep at the track was highlighted by an incident worthy of Scott Bloomquist. Jeff "The Animal" Taylor was seen driving his Modified through the pits toward the facility exit and the next thing we all heard was the roar of a race car. Seems Mr. Taylor decided to take his race car for a test lap as he went screaming up and down the busy highway previously mentioned. I don't know if he had his seat belt fastened but if he would have been stopped by the Oklahoma State Police, that would have been the least of his worries!

I had a little fun with Texas Modified driver Joe Gomez in the pits before the action started. He had a very fine looking car but firmly attached to the roof of the car was a bright yellow rubber ducky! We both had a laugh about that as I questioned whether that was illegal aerodynamics under IMCA rules! That was one speed secret that his close friend and pit neighbor, Modified driver Roy Capps didn't have on his car. 

I would like to say that Gomez had a good evening but that wasn't the case as he was the innocent victim of another driver's error and he ended up crashing big time, doing what appeared to be heavy damage to his car and exiting the track on a hook. 

For two days the weather forecast had been pretty consistent and that generally isn't a good sign when they are calling for severe storms during the evening hours. That's what made it maddening when I headed up to the grandstands, ready for hot laps, only to find that the track had been generously over watered with no packing vehicles on the track. For at least thirty minutes the track sat empty until finally two gigantic packing vehicles pulled on to the track and helped immensely. However, their appearance was only ten minutes before the advertised starting time! Where were they for the last half hour?

Seriously, do tracks have some script that they follow so they make sure to over water the track on a night when storm clouds are rolling to the West and every second matters? When promptness is needed, that's when they decide to diddle around. When they did finally get going, they moved things along quickly but it was forty five minutes after the advertised starting time when the first green flag dropped as the clouds by now were boiling and the lightning flashing. 

Would they under any circumstances ever got the whole show completed? Probably not. But they likely could have finished up all the heat races, thus leaving them the possibility of running the rest of the program later during the weekend if they were so inclined. 

As it was, theytossed the scheduled running order with the Modifieds racing their heat races first, knowing that they were the only division that needed a B Feature on this night. I liked the fact that they were only running three classes for this special and not trying to pad the pits like too many tracks now do for early season specials. I also liked that they had planned an early starting time, even though it was a week night race; if only they would have followed through on their plan. 

As it was, we saw five interesting Modified heats with winners including Justin Whitehead, Mike Goodson, Drew Janssen, Troy Cordes and Brint Hartwick. The  first Sport Mod heat on the track when it finally started to rain after it appeared that we had dodged the worst storms which drifted off to our North. Also, fortunately, the track missed the biggest hail and rains as other areas not so far away had a rather nasty storm, but I just had a very few small hailstones ping off my car on my way back to the hotel. 

The car counts included forty five Modifieds, twenty seven Stock Cars and twenty two Southern Sport Mods, all figures that are likely to be larger the rest of the weekend since scheduled were three full shows with more drivers likely to make the weekend events when early starts are also planned. 


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