On Monday night, July 11th the opening night of the much anticipated fever heat 100 was held at the Stuart international speedway in Stuart Iowa. This would be the first xr super series event to be held in the state of Iowa and also at the track owned by Mike vangenderen who has done much of the previous track prep at other xr events such as bristol, Charlotte,Texas and Las Vegas.
The xr super series events have assembled much of the finest talent in the world of dirt track late model racing for a series of big money races and a large point fund for those drivers that follow the series.
Most of their events have been at high visibility tracks in major metropolitan areas and associated with prominent racing groups and their has been much anticipation due to this race which is being held at little quarter mile bullring in a small town in central Iowa with limited seating.
To have two nights of racing with the winner each night to receive twenty thousand dollars and two thousand dollars just to start the main is rather mind blowing, and it just adds to the unique flavor of this race held at such a small facility.
Along with the late models stock cars would also be racing as the entrants in this class gather points toward a huge blow out event at Vegas in November. Hobby stocks would round out the show.
Xr certainly held up their end as they supplied a power house field of forty two drivers and most of the top rated drivers in the country. Mvg mentioned that while this might not be the largest fielg of late models assembled in the state of Iowa this year, it would be the strongest and that would be hard to argue with.
I must admit that with all the build up for this race I was expecting an event of gigantic proportions and I almost didn't attend as I was afraid that I wouldn't even be able to find a seat. I decided to try and when I arrived I was surprised to find that there were all kinds of top row seats available. And while there was a very good crowd on hand there were plenty of seats available in what is not that big a grandstand.
Whether it was the fact it was a Monday night, the race could be seen on tv or it was the pretty healthy ticket price of forty bucks to get in or perhaps a combination of the above, it didn't turn into the mass of humanity jammed together that I anticipated.
Mvg really had things organized wonderfully from the parking for racers and fans and venders as he used every inch of his eighteen acres to it's max. There were even folks to direct traffic both before and after the show.
This was a time trial show for the late models and as such, because of that things didn't get started on time with the first heat not starting until after 8pm, but after that things really rolled with xr officials, in combination with the local track workers, moving things along nicely.
Perhaps it was because of the smaller track, but they chose to divide the late models into six heats with three moving on and then two b features that took two. Add two provisionals ang the twenty four car field was set. Significant were the large numbers of truly talented racers that didn't even make the main.
I could lie and say what a fantastic race the feature was but in truth it was pretty humdrum. On this night, putting Jonathan Davenport on the pole was bad news for the field. He never got off the bottom in fifty laps and he didn't have to as marched away from the field for an easy win. There were just enough yellows to make lapped traffic a non issue and he had to only lap one car in the fifty laps.
Most of the contenders just lined up single file and ran the bottom, not trying upstairs at all.
It was only in the late laps that tim McCreadie rolled to the second lane and with a lot of hard work was able to get to second.
Ryan Gustin put on the show as he came in the late laps from outside the top five to nearly nip McCreadie for second. It was not that Ryan got faster but that those running nose to tail got even slower.
McCreadie tried to hint in his heat race interview that they needed to leave the track alone and let the cars widen it out but the message was missed. His post feature comments were more pointed as he said they spent most of the feature race just getting it so they could race on it. I'm afraid that in their efforts to provide the perfect track, they over did things and out engineered themselves. They got a fast track but not one good to race on. But there is always Tuesday night and hopefully lessons learned to be applied.
The stock cars saw a murty sweep with dallon coming from fifteenth for the win as he out raced father Damon for the thousand dollar top prize. Jesse sobbing would finish a strong third. This race had the potential to be so much more but a crazy nine bad yellow flags took the zing out of this event.
Skylar Pruitt showed lots of speed as he came from fifth on the grid to overtake Adam Hensel and win the hobby stocks main. Interestingly, one of the entrants in this race was really a two man cruiser with the passenger seat vacant on this night.
Thanks to Barry Braun and everyone at the xr super series along with Mike vg and his staff for a memorable night of racing.
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