Monday night, June 20th, night one of two for the Premier Industries Heartland Horsepower Nationals was held at the Park Jefferson International Speedway in Jefferson South Dakota. This Monday show would be qualifying night for the Sport Mods as they tried to position themselves well for Tuesday night's big finale for their class, paying five thousand dollars to the winner.
Along with the IMCA Sanctioned Sport Mods, a full program would also be held in the other four divisions that routinely race at Park Jefferson and that would include the Modifieds, Stock Cars, Hobby Stocks and Sport Compacts.
These two nights would be the wrap up to a busy stretch of racing for the drivers from the Siouxland area. For those that don't know, Park Jefferson and Raceway Park share one of the most unusual set ups of any tracks I know of in the country. Park and Raceway are directly across the highway from each other and either one can be easily viewed from the parking lot of the other. The reason that there are two race tracks so close to each other is that while Raceway Park has long been an established track sitting right along Interstate 29, Park Jefferson was originally a track built for racing horses and for pari-mutuel betting, but it didn't last and eventually the track was converted for auto racing purposes so there are now two tracks so close together. Raceway races on Sundays and Park on Saturdays so on this weekend it would be possible to race four straight nights and never have to do more than literally drive across the street to do so!
Adam Adamson, the owner of Park Jefferson, has announced that this will be his last year as the promoter of the track. I understand that a new business venture and other work commitments will no longer allow him the time to run a race track so the track is for sale. I am also told that he has received three offers on the track that have yet to be reviewed so I can't say just what the future holds for the track and whether the offers to buy include keeping the track going. The property is within close proximity of I-29 which would make it appealing for interests both wanting and not wanting to use the facility as a race track moving forward. Frankly, I can't believe that there are three parties in the entire Midwest right now that would want to buy the facility to keep as a race track , but hopefully I am wrong.
Adam has been reassuring people for the last week that this race would take place, no matter what the weather forecast would bring. And he was true to his word, despite the fact that conditions were brutal. The high temperature was just at the 100 degree mark and there was a blast furnace wind blowing right out of the South sustained at twenty mph or more, making for just about the harshest conditions that I can remember in quite some time. The racing season is long enough in the Midwest that we get to both freeze and boil during the same year and hopefully, live to tell about it. I must admit that I was surprised just how good the crowd was, given the fact that it was brutal out. For myself, I just wasn't able to make as many rounds of the pits as usual and I had to sit down a couple of times; that or faint! The drivers and crews working on the cars had to be a tough lot on a night like this.
Speaking of the drivers, with so much money on the line for the Sport Mods, the drivers had to show up, lousy conditions or not and forty seven Sport Mod drivers, some from as far away as Green Bay, signed in to race. Drivers in the other four divisions were perhaps just a bit tired from a long weekend and had to take a night off and while there were a decent number of Sport Compacts and Hobby Stocks, the Stock Cars and Modifieds were limited to just one heat of each. The good thing is that drivers in those four other classes could take a night off, come back on Tuesday and still run another full show.
As you might guess, with the heat and wind, the track was icy slick and was definitely a driver's track with raw horsepower not much of an advantage on this night. Honestly, just about every other time I have been at Park Jeff, the condition of the track has remained constant as they usually run it that way here, but it might have been to the extreme on icy racing on Monday. This race doesn't have an outside wall, just a runoff area beyond the corners and new drivers especially can be tricked by that with several taking a ride off the end before they figure out that they can't drop that right rear tire over the edge unless they want to do some off road racing. I was a bit surprised that they felt the need to hot lap all classes, especially since most of the competitors in the other classes were regulars anyway. I thought that just hot lapping the Sport Mods would be a good way to save some precious laps on the track surface on Monday but they know their track better than I. It actually never did seem to take rubber on this night, just get slicker and slicker.
The Sport Mods would run two heats with their starting order reversed for the second heat. They did, however, run against the same cars in both heats and I have seen some places that would mix the cars for the second go round but they chose not to do so here. Sport Mods got two yellows while the rest of the classes were running under the one spin rule. No matter, the whole program went down very smoothly with the twenty race show having only a handful of yellow flags and much green flag racing.
There would be no big surprises in who qualified for the Tuesday night show with the top ten in combined passing points from the two heats locked in. Probably the most impressive run was that of Karl Brewer who came from ninth to win the second heat he ran in. That would insure for him the pole position for Tuesday night's big feature race. Others that made the top ten include Josh Blom, Jared Boumeester, Colby Fett, Willy Kirk, Arie Schouten, Brayton Carter, Brandon Spanjer, Logan Anderson and Devyn Peterson. The rest of the field will engage in Last Chance races on Tuesday.
As far as the other four main events were concerned, Jay DeVries would take only two laps to come from ninth to take the lead in the Sport Compact feature and then he would run away with that nonstop main. DeVries still has his Hobby Stock but has been running more Sport Compact races of late where his success rate is much higher. Anthony Clark would finish a distant second.
The Hobby Stock feature would see Craig Clift, who does the track prep here as well as race, start on the pole and lead all the way for that main event win. Gavin Gilbertson would ride the rear bumper of Clift toward the end of the race but he would try no dirty sliders, which the track was primed to deliver, and instead ride home nailed to Clift's rear bumper. Track point leader David Miller would make a nice charge from ninth to finish in third.
Devin Tripp would lead the first two laps of the Stock Car feature before he slipped up the track and Mike Albertson would be right there to take over the lead. Albertson would then pull away for a dominating win with Tripp holding off Todd Gereau for second.
The best race was the Modified feature which saw three different leaders in its fifteen lap length. Jim Thies would lead lap one before being passed by Bob Moore. However, Thies would fight back and by the halfway point of the race, he would be back in the lead.
Patiently moving his way to the front was Chris Abelson who would grab second from Moore after a hard battle and then set sail after Thies. This race would go nonstop with momentum on this night a huge issue as gaining ground on this slippery track had to be done slowly and smoothly. It didn't look like Abelson would have the time to catch Thies but slowly he caught up and when the yellow flew with only two laps to go, it allowed Abelson to start right on Jim's rear bumper.
Abelson used speed to pull up beside Thies in turn one on the restart. He didn't attempt a slider, clean or otherwise, but pulled up beside Thies and as they left turn two for the back stretch, Abelson was able to edge out in front. He cleared Thies, and then pulled away for the win, with the yellow a heart breaking blow for Thies who was oh so close to the win.
Visiting announcer Jerry VanSickel was calling the action tonight and we had to wait for the very last race to hear J-Vans best quip of the night. Jim Cole was starting p 1 for the feature and was debuting a new sponsor broadly on his car. The sponsor is an area "Gentlemen's Club" and the graphic picture on the side of Cole's car gave J-Van the opportunity to tell us that Cole was "starting on the pole" which quite literally, he was, if you get my meaning. I don't believe the prominently displayed fanny on the sail panel of Cole's car was Jim's butt either. Jim would get a top five finish to boot.
Track officials, recognizing the fact that it was hotter than Cole's sponsor out and that it was a week night, did a great job of moving the show along. The entire event was done just before 10 pm and I would expect they would show the same urgency on Tuesday night, although it is supposed to be about ten degrees cooler and the wind to switch in a more Westerly direction, thus pumping in less moist air and sparing our sandblasted eyeballs just a bit.
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