The MARS Racing Series arrived at the Davenport Speedway on Tuesday night, July 26th for a special midweek show that paid ten thousand dollars to the winner of the fifty lap main event. Normally a mostly regional series, this race, positioned as it was between the Silver Dollar Nationals at I-80 and Boone and then with most of the heavy hitters planning to run at Fairbury this coming weekend, it proved to be a perfect stopping ground for a number of the finest traveling stars in the country to attend. Keep in mind also that Davenport will be hosting a three night show for the World of Outlaw Late Model tour is around a month and some may also have had a plan to get some laps on the track in preparation for that big event although point leader Dennis Erb was not in attendance on Tuesday, even though his Illinois base is not that far away.
Positively Racing had bloggers coming out of the woodwork for this event so I will not beat a dead horse with another lap by lap breakdown and instead leave that to Danny and Jeff who do a better job than I anyway. Instead, I'll hit the highlights of the night.
It was a good night of racing but it didn't hit the "home run" that last year's event did or even what the Lucas Oil race earlier this Summer produced. But even the finest hitters in baseball don't drive in runs with every at bat and on this night they probably hit a two bagger but left the runner stranded on base.
Actually, the two support classes, the IMCA Modifieds and the Street Stocks did a great job with their parts of the program, producing two good feature events while the Late Models had a tough time keeping under the green with the first half of the race producing five yellow flags before everyone settled down and ran off the last twenty eight nonstop.
The Late Model field was a good one with twenty eight drivers entered with some of the biggest names in the sport entered and certainly more than one would expect to see for a typical ten grand to win MARS race. It was a perfect night to set some records early and that is just what they did. The track was heavy but not too heavy, there was plenty of humidity in the air and cloud cover, all of which set up nicely to produce some blazing speeds. I believe the old track record was broken four times and Devin Moran set a new record with a scalding fast lap of 13.333 seconds as the eighteen car of twenty eight to qualify.
All four heat races were won right off the pole and there was not much passing in them, a trend that is very prevalent in these time trial shows and acerbated by the fast nature of the track. They ran a B Feature to all four more to the main event and then, at the last minute, announced that everyone would make the main so they started all twenty eight. The Late Model feature was scheduled to go second in the running order for the features but then again at the last second that got changed and the other two features would precede the Late Models, a move that annoyed some in the crowd and likely those that had to go to work on Wednesday morning.
O'Neal would be scored the leader of all fifty laps and he seriously wasn't challenged at all until late in the race when O'Neal got into lapped traffic. O'Neal was running mostly the bottom line in turns three and four and then using the banking on the other end of the track. Bobby Pierce quickly moved up from fifth in the starting lineup to move into second and he was the primary chaser of O'Neal for most of the race.
The first half of the race had many stops and starts and it took until just before halfway for a pattern to emerge. Pierce would manage to hang with O'Neal but never seem to gain any ground on him. Moran, Mike Marlar and Jonathan Davenport all slipped back a bit to make it a two car race. The inside line seemed to get faster for awhile as Max Blair really started to make ground up but then Pierce, as seemingly the only driver still on the top started to get faster again.
O'Neal stated later that he moved up the track to pass a couple of lapped cars and then found that the top groove was taking on rubber. It would be interesting to know whether that was the case or if he got "the signal" from his crew to get up the track or lose the lead. In any event, he moved up just in time to keep Pierce behind him and then had to play the jockeying game with the slower cars as to whether or not to try and pass them.
Pierce threw a couple of sliders at O'Neal in the late laps and it was a close one that kept in in front as Bobby was very close to edging in front off turn two a couple of times. Pierce surprised me at the end as I figured he would back up and then throw one big one on the final lap or two at O'Neal but he didn't. I don't know if the slower cars in front of O'Neal, which would have been the Gundaker brothers, picked up speed or perhaps Bobby just misjudged but O'Neal would drive on for the win by a couple of car lengths with Pierce just riding it out behind him in the same groove.
After the great race put on by the Lucas Oil set earlier this year, it came as quite a surprise and a bit of a disappointment that the track took on rubber at the end because, quite frankly, when a track rubbers up the racing is done and in most cases it becomes a high speed, follow the leader event with the potential lapped cars just as fast as the leaders. And that certainly was the case with the Gundakers on this night. Ricky Kay must have been disappointed with the outcome tonight to some degree because they actually did a little additional track prep right before the Late Model feature.
The Modified feature was a very good race with Matt Werner holding off Travis Denning for the win. Ryan Duhme led the first lap before Denning took over the lead. Meanwhile, Werner, who started eighth, was on the move and just at the halfway point of the race he made a bold move and completed the pass to take over the lead.
After that, it was an entertaining last ten laps as the two leaders exchanged slide jobs, sometimes more than one per lap and while Werner was scored the leader of each lap, Denning had his moments when he also was the leader. They battled right up to the end with Werner holding on by a slim margin to take the win with Duhme third.
The Street Stock class is an interesting one. The local Street Stocks that run here and at East Moline have some different rules than the Stock Cars but here they race together and seemingly, pretty even. Certainly the Stock Cars look a lot nicer as the Street Stocks are slab sided things that resemble nothing while the Stock Cars look like, yes, Stock Cars. I have to wonder why they just don't run Stock Cars because then those drivers would have almost unlimited choices where they could race but as the Street Stocks they are limited to just a very small number of tracks here in the Quad Cities area. But that is a question to be answered at another time.
Track point leader Jeff Struck Jr would start on the pole thanks to the redraw and he would lead every lap but it was not a cinch by any means as Rob Henry pressured him from start to finish and came very close to making a pass. This race had only one yellow flag and no lapped cars as it was very smoothly run. Stock Cars driven by David Brandies and Justin Kay would both finish in the top five.
All racing would be complete before 10 pm, even with a Late Model finale that kind of dragged out with the several yellow flags. They took very little down time and really kept the show moving which is something that must be done for a midweek show.
And of course, as seems to be the case here just about every time I come here, the fans of this area love their Late Models and they support any special that is held here as another large crowd filled the cavernous grandstand here at the Mississippi Valley Fairgrounds. Ricky Kay has done an outstanding job of reviving racing here in Davenport with both his specials and weekly shows, all producing big car counts while bringing in the national driving names that people want to see while at the same time maintaining a low profile himself. It's about time that he start receiving the credit he deserves and more national attention for the turn around he had done here. Racing was in a bad state here at what once used to be a hotbed area for racing until he came along and "juiced " things back up for the Quad Cities racing fans.
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