One of the very few races in the entire Midwest on Friday night, April 8th was held at the Eighty One Speedway in Park City(just North of Wichita) Kansas. The featured division for this weekend would be the MLRA Late Models, making their first appearance at Eighty One since the 2003 racing season. Along with them, the other classes racing would be two of the local classes, the Super Stocks and the Rookie Modiifeds. IMCA Mod Lites would also be racing both nights this weekend.
While the rest of the Midwest is up to their eyeballs in water, it is very dry in Kansas with areas just to the North of Wichita critically needing rain as fire watches have been posted for several days with occasional wild fires breaking out and with the hurricane winds that most in the Midwest have been dealing with this week, that is not a good thing.
The Eighty One Speedway continues to look better and better with more improvements all the time from new owners F.O.E. Motorsports and John Allen in charge. A new pit grandstand has been built for 2022 which would be the envy of many tracks for their regular grandstand for spectators! The parking lot, long a source of ball joint breaking pot holes, has been smoothed out but I am still waiting for the lights in the parking lot that is mighty dark to negotiate after the show is completed. Track lighting and the p.a. system are one of the best around as all the up grades have made what was a rather old looking veteran track much more appealling.
The MLRA brought thirty nine Late Models for the first of two nights of racing. It was a nice mix of MLRA regulars, plus some regional and area drivers as it seems that Late Model racing is on the uptick in the Kansas area. A lot of turnover among drivers that raced this series last year showed as only nine of the top twenty in 2021 points were on hand but definitely some new faces among the racers. The only area that I thought under achieved was the SLMR crowd where I thought there would be a few more drivers from the Omaha area here is that really isn't that far away, especially for a nice doubleheader with good money on the line.
The format for the MLRA would see qualifying to begin the program followed by heats, two B Features and a thirty lap main on this night. When I started to moan about time trials, the gentlemen siting next to me reminded me that if I wanted to see open Late Models, I must as well get used to time trials as everyone does it. He was correct and I do need to get used to it but MLRA is among the worst, running heats straight up from qualifying and then the feature straight up from the heat finish with no invert of any kind. To say that qualifying is important would be a major understatement, especially when the field is strong and the numbers big. Tad Pospisil would score one for the SLMR crowd when he was quick qualifier.
Things got off to a shaky start when the first heat for the Super Stocks hit the track forty seven minutes after the advertised starting time. After factoring in the qualifying, they were perhaps ahead of schedule! Then, after only two Super Stock heats, they completely farmed the track for the Late Model heats. This came as quite a stunner but MLRA announcer Billy Rock made the point that with the tire shortage that they didn't want the track to take rubber and everyone was on a tire limit for this weekend. While all that is true, it also begs the question that if tires are in short supply, why did they have a three hour practice session on Thursday night where they certainly must have burned up a few Hoosiers.? But that is a question for another time.
They did tinker with the track on several further occasions during the night but it did seem to help. After starting out fast but with a narrow groove, the track gradually widened out with a couple of good side by side extended battles during the heats and the feature was good with plenty of passing and some great slide job battles for position.
Four Late Model heats, a pair of B Features and throw in three provisional starters and that would set the twenty five car field for the thirty lap Late Model go. And while the statistics will show that Bobby Pierce would lead all thirty laps for the win, it was a better race than that might make it sound. True, the battles weren't for the lead except following yellow flags, but there were some great battles for top five positions going on throughout the race.
The first eleven laps went off smooth with pole starter Pospisil sliding up the track to block Rodney Sanders on the opening lap and Pierce driving by both to take the lead. Ryan Gustin was on the move as he raced into second before the yellow flew when shockingly, defending series champion Tony Jackson Jr rolled to a stop with an apparent serious engine issue.
Sanders would make a great move on the restart , going from third to first but it was called back after TP (Terry Phillips) made a rare spin in turn one. Pierce didn't let that mistake happen again as he secured the lead and would go on to lead the rest of the way, building up a five second lead as he negotiated through lapped traffic.
The battle for second though, was a dandy with Gustin and Pierce exchanging slide jobs numerous times as they battled for the spot with Gustin finally prevailing. Chase Junghans made a determined charge, coming from thirteenth to slip past Rodney for third and Johnny Scott rounded out the field as you can see that there were plenty of strong drivers on hand. Only four drivers didn't finish the race and four were a lap behind with the last half of the race going nonstop. Saturday night they add on another ten laps and two grand to the winners and hopefully the non rubber, racy track conditions will continue. It was noted that Ryan Whitworth from Humboldt Speedway was on hand to help with track prep on this night.
A dozen of the Super Stocks were on hand, a class with cars that look quite like the Super Stock class that I see at home and much like the Pro Stock classes that race across the Midwest. Beau Davis, a Stock Car winner at Humboldt recently, was on hand to race with the Super Stocks and his car looked unchanged except for the big spoiler bolted to the truck lid. And he ran quite competitively until mechanical issues took him out of the main.
Mikey McIlvain would lead the opening lap until the first yellow flew and on the restart veteran driver David Blocher would get past him to take over the lead. Blocher would then lead the rest of the event, chased by Chris Purkey who had gone to the back early following a spin and then worked his way back to the front. James Weve would finish third in a fifteen lapper that would have three yellow flag slow downs.
The third class to race were the Rookie Modifieds, of which there were two dozen of them. Just what constitutes a "Rookie Modified" driver? This is what their rule book says. "This class is for beginners. If you have won the Rookie Mod Championship you can not run in this class." That would seem to be a rather broad statement and likely open to various interpretation. But regardless of that, there were quite a variety of cars in this class. Some looked like top notch new Modifieds while there were few on the track that looked like they might have been among the originals that raced with Keith Knaack and Dude Thompson for the Vinton opener forty some years ago.
And sad to say, some of the drivers raced like it was their first time ever on a track as this race turned into a big cluster. Five yellows in the first four laps were more than enough to test the patience of track officials, who quickly made the move to "gong" this event. A fifteen lapper was quickly cut to six as the time grew late and the weather colder.
Even with the green, white and checkered finish, it still took two more tries to get the last two laps complete and while there was a crash in turn one on the final lap, the flagman whipped out the checkered flag anyway to end our suffering, and his. Chevy Coleman(I kid you not) was the winner over K.C. Mullin and Wyatt Gaggero.
The show picked up momentum after the late start and except for the self inflicted wounds produced by the final class, track officials did a good job of moving things along with the Mod Lites hitting the track about 11 pm, at the same time I hit the parking lot. A fairly nice crowd was on hand for a wind swept and cold night of racing with a much larger delegation expected on Saturday when its supposed to hit seventy degrees. Ah, this crazy Spring weather.
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