The first annual Kokomo Dirt Nationals, part of the XR Series schedule, kicked off on Monday night, September 19th at the Kokomo Speedway in Indiana. Billed as the "Baddest Bullring" in the state of Indiana, the Kokomo Speedway is quite an historic race track and is often thought off as the home for Sprint Cars without wings in this state. And while they have a couple shows each year featuring Late Models, this would likely be the biggest racing events ever held here for Late Models. This race was a late addition on the schedule, replacing the Texas races after the decision was made to shut down that track for 2022 and put a completely new surface on it. Barry Braun and the XR folks found this track, which was a most fortunate thing, because we would eventually get to see a most entertaining evening of racing on what they generously call a quarter mile track.
I guess that since this race was replacing an event in Texas, they decided to supply Texas like weather as the temperature was in the high eighties and with humidity to match, it was a most warm mid September day in west central Indiana and highly unexpected by me. However, it was good to get back to a no coat night after having a little cool weather to deal with earlier this weekend in Minnesota.
It's been a few generations since I was last at Kokomo and while I remembered the basic layout of the place, many of the details had slipped my memory over the years. I expected this place to be one with ankle deep mud and the race cars hammering off a deep cushion and the wall and while there was plenty of wall banging, the place didn't race quite like I'd expected. However, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing either, as they set it up to be black and slick but it was such that several grooves were still available. The track is not banked as much as I remembered but it is extraordinarily wide and for that reason drivers are able to keep up their speeds, even though there isn't a huge amount of banking to work off of.
The old original grandstand is on the front chute with a new, very high rise aluminum grandstand on the back chute that spectators can drive around back and sit in along with the race crews. Either sides provide excellent viewing although the front stretch stand faces West and much like say 34 Raceways or Princeton Speedway in Minnesota , the sun is a factor until it goes down, which, unfortunately, gets earlier and earlier every night.
Since the O'Connor family bought the track, there have been many upgrades to concessions, lighting, restrooms and sound system etc., and it is a very nice facility. Do watch out for the old wooden boards on the front chute though, as quite a few of them are "punky" and bow like a banana. Overall, a very nice facility. They were having "gremlins" with the p.a. system on this night, early on, and some of the spectators on hand sure didn't cut them much slack with finally one of the local track officials, who apparently knew the most of the outspoken crew complaining, went down and told him to knock it off as they were working on the problem. That pretty much shut him up which was a positive for the rest of the crowd.
Just two classes would be racing this XR Series event, with the Super Late Models joined by the UMP Modifieds. Both classes were very well represented with forty two cars apiece in each class. The Modified field had a couple of "ringers" as Ricky Thornton Jr ran in both classes while Silver Crown star Tyler Roahrig also drove a Mod on this night.
The Late Model class had many of the top driving talents in the country on hand with seven of their top ten in current points on hand plus many other great Late Model racers. I was as tough a field as you will probably see all year. And they were racing for some major money with over a quarter of a million dollars on the line this week with twenty thousand dollars to the winner of tonight's forty lapper alone. It was not very long ago that racing on a Monday and Tuesday night in September for such large amounts of money would be unthinkable but people like Barry Braun have changed the face of Late Model racing and the new norm is certainly very much unlike what we were used to only perhaps just a year of so ago.
The program would be identical for both classes with both qualifying against the clock, followed by six heats, two B Features and a main event for both. Because the pay per view is so important for this series, the Late Models would go first in the running order but at the end of the night, I noted that most folks stuck around to watch the Modifieds too.
Things kind of got off to a rocky start but I'm glad to report that they smoothed things out as the evenin progressed and I expect the whole show to operate as smoothly as things eventually did on Monday, dome Tuesday's show.
Besides the maddening p.a. issues, the scoreboard wasn't showing the time trials so only those monitoring on line knew who was quick. Instead of qualifying at 7 p.m like posted, that's when the first cars hit the track and it took some time to roll in the track and then of course, the Late Models had to have extensive hot lap sessions, after which they returned for time trials. The Modifieds had hot laps/qualifying(they always qualify UMP Mods) and then the Late Models returned to qualify but because of the smaller track I assume, they only did cars in pairs of two, no larger. So instead of seeing racing at 7 p.m as advertised, the first Late Model heat didn't hit the track until 8:50 pm. Yikes.
However, once they got rolling, the program moved along very fast and I give them credit for really moving things along and ultimately, the final checkered waved at 11:30 p.m., late yes for a Monday night but still much earlier than it could have been, given their rocky start. Brandon Overton was quickest overall at 13,530 seconds and Derek topped the Mods at 14,453.
However, while the Late Models lined straight up for their heats and then lined up the feature based on heat race finishes, the Modifieds lined straight up but then qualified for the feature based on passing points, something that I didn't think UMP cars ever did.
The racing was remarkably clean on this night, despite the fact that many of the Late Model drivers had never seen this track before and it is tight, quarter mile racing which on occasion, can produce plenty of contact. There were three instances of Late Models getting "dumped" by other competitors during the heat race action but in this game, you just race on and "chat" it out later as cars stopped go to the back, even if they were spun.
A big surprise was the failure of Bobby Pierce, a big crowd favorite here so close to his home area. After his troubles at Knoxville on Sunday, he was the last car to arrive today and they had a different car then they had run the previous day. However, during hot laps a puff of smoke came from the car, Pierce dove into the infield and then took a push off the track. He would never reappear and soon the transporter would leave the pits, along with the souvenir trailer, an indication that he won't be back on Tuesday as they may be out of motors
In the theme of the night, the two main events were very smooth races with a total of seventy laps of racing that was stopped only once by a yellow flag, and that was when Brian Shirley got a flat tire! That would be the only Late Model slowdown while the Mods would go thirty without a yellow which is almost unheard of.
Brandon Overton would take the early lead from the pole but it would only take Shane Chanton six laps to roar past him on the outside. Many of the drivers were running a low groove but those that moved up the track and gave it time found success up there. Tyler Erb would move into contention with him getting past Clanton on lap thirteen. Then the best racing of the evening broke out as Clanton got up on the wheel and fought back.
There were some great but clean slide jobs thrown by both drivers as they battled for the lead while at the same time Overton started to drop back with Jimmy Owens, Jonathan Davenport and Tim McCreadie battling for position. This was all done smoothly and cleanly and made for great racing.
Finally, Clanton reestablished his strength as he pulled away from Erb and with no more yellows to bunch things up, he would drive on for the win over Erb and Owens. An impressive run was made by Brandon Sheppard, driving the family car this week as he came from sixteenth to finish fourth, using both the cushion and low side of the track as necessary with Davenport completing the top five.
Tyler Nicely completely dominated the Modified feature, leading from start to finish and never being challenged by anyone. He pulled away from Jamie Lomax immediately and proceeded to walk away from everyone. With no yellows to give anyone a chance to catch him, his drive was one of complete domination. At the finish, there were only ten cars on the lead lap with four lapped cars and nearly a half lap break between himself and second place finisher David Stremme. The best job of moving up was done by Thornton Jr who started fifteenth and charged up to fourth at the finish.
The racing was good by both classes all night, even giving the domination of Nicely in the Mods. There was plenty of side by side racing and drivers using all the track and if not for the late start, it might have been one of the smoothest shows of the year. I am confident that these issues won't reappear again on Tuesday. This show had a definite Iowa touch to it as Bucky Doren is operating at the director of the event and the announcer is Iowa's "Big Boy", who we finally started to hear about half way through the proceedings.
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