Thursday night, July 14th, the 2nd Annual Mod Wars featuring WISSOTA vs. USMTS Mods started at the Ogilvie Raceway near Ogilvie Minnesota. This three night show, which is also part of the regular USMTS championship schedule, is run under some rules unique to this weekend. The WISSOTA cars, which are running under the regular rules of the WISSOTA Promoter's organization, utilize many rules that are close and similar to USRA rules. However, the WISSOTA cars have a different motor package than USRA and while they also utilize a "spec" engine, their version of the spec engine is not quite as open as USRA's version with the end result being that the WISSOTRA cars are somewhere between 75-100 horsepower less than the USRA cars, depending on who you talk to. The other big difference is tires where WISSOTA uses Hoosier tires while the USRA cars are on American Racers.
Normally, when a WISSOTA car wants to enter a USMTS or USRA event, they must utilize the series tire among other changes but for this special three night program, the WISSOTA are allowed to run this USMTS event without changes, as long as they are WISSOTA legal. Understandably, this helps increase the car count for the this event because if local cars don't have to buy tires, they are much more likely to enter the contest and for the promoters, the more cars the better. And from some people that I talked with, they didn't feel that the difference in tires was significant.
However, the WISSOTA drivers that I talked with mostly felt that they would need a slick track to be competitive on this night as the horsepower difference was significant. The Ogilvie Raceway is genarally known as providing a slick track though and the local driver's knowledge of the track would also likely be a factor in their favor. So with USMTS providing their top eighteen drivers in points and nineteen of the top twenty in points on hand plus some of the top WISSOTA talent along with locals that likely wouldn't be racing except for the optional tire rules, a strong field of forty six Modified drivers would sign in to race.
Some of the top WISSOTA talent on hand to take on the USMTS regulars would include Shane Sabraski, Dave Cain, Ryan Gierke, Clayton Wagamon and Jody Bellefeuille while it was interesting to note that Dan Ebert, who has raced the entire USMTS schedule but also has a WISSOTA car, opted for the Hoosier tire car on this night, giving up the horsepower advantage.
Along with the Modifieds, WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds, Mod Fours and Hornets would all be in action. The MidMods provided a strong field of thirty three drives and the unique Mod Fours, a class that utilizes cars that look like Modifieds but are just smaller in scale and run four cylinder engines, pulled a nice field of nineteen drivers to race. I'm sure this class is one that fans from south of WISSOTA country have never seen before , but in certain parts of fWISSOTA, they are very popular..
With rain on the radar and possibly headed at some point toward the track, the track and USMTS officials did a great job of running off a speedy program. Promptly at 6:30 pm the USMTS field rolled on to the track and without any warmup laps of any kind, they went right into group qualifying. Possibly because they had a practice night on Wednesday they skipped warm ups but in any event, how different dirt racing is from tar racing where they would have to practice for hours before they would even consider qualifying.
In any event, the qualifying would go quickly and right at 7 pm the first green flag dropped on the MidMod heats. All classes would use passing points on this night to line up the mains and determine which Mods and MidMods had to run B Features. There were two Mod B's and one big one for the MidMods. All this proceeded quickly and by around 9 pm it was feature time.
MidMods would be first and their twenty four car, twenty lap event could prove problematic for those watching the radar and hoping for a quick event, but the MidMods did a great job, running their race with only one yellow flag and with only three drivers not going the distance.
With current WISSOTA national point leader Jake Smith on the pole, and multi time national champion Shane Sabraski guest driving a car on the outside pole, it would seem that one or the other would likely be the winner. However, that proved to not be the case as David Swearingen drove by both of them and raced on to a dominant win as no one could touch him. The "Cobra", Cody Lee would use the outside line to drive up to second with Sabraski setting for third.
The Modifieds were moved up in the running order from the heat race order to run their feature second and make sure that they got that race in. With several provisional racers added to the field, Thursday night's three grand to win race would start thirty cars.
Tyler Wolff would start on the pole and he would quickly drive away from the field, pulling out to a considerable lead early in the contest until the twelve lap mark was hit, at which time things got bogged down with three straight yellows without completing a lap.
After that we would probably have raced to the checkered except for an unfortunate incident involving the leader. Wolff was totally dominating and once they got back to racing, he was way far out in front of anyone. He built up nearly a full straightaway lead over the field while a great race for second saw Cain, Lucas Schott, Dustin Sorensen and Sabraski battling for position. But they were far behind the leader.
However, Wolff caught the back of the pack with about a half dozen laps left. Despite the fact that he had a big lead, he got impatient with the slower cars, and by this time in the race the track had started to take rubber and was pretty one lane on the bottom. Going into turn three, Wolff tried to stick his nose under the slower car, they made contact and both spun. The second pack came up on the wreck and second place driver Cain couldn't get stopped and banged hard into the front end of Wolff's car.
What a crazy moment! The big question was to what extent were they going to protect the leader and would Wolff get his lead back. However, that proved to be a moot point when the damage from the contact with Cain was enough to send Wolff to the pits and out of the race. Ironically, Cain didn't suffer much damage and was able to restart the race, now as the leader.
There were four laps left and Cain was able to hold on for the win. He would almost give it away on the last corner as he slipped high but Sorensen was pushing so hard he followed Cain right up the track and couldn't make a passing attempt.
So the opening volley in the Mod Wars went to the WISSOTA driver Cain over USMTS point leader Sorensen. Lucas Schott would finish third over another WISSOTA driver in Sabraski, who was debuting a brand new Jay McDonald race car while Dereck Ramirez would complete the top five. The stakes continue to rise the next two nights with five and eleven grand on the line for the winners the next two nights.
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