Round number two of the Kokomo Clash was held on Tuesday night, September 20th at the Kokomo Speedway in Indiana. An identical program to Monday night's would be held for the two classes involved, the XR Late Models and the UMP Modifieds. The notable difference would that for an extra twenty laps of racing, the purse for the winner would be doubled to forty thousand dollars! Mods would again be racing for fifteen hundred dollars to win but for some of the top Modified entrants, the UMP points were just as important to them as the cash was.
Right off the top, I must make a correction from Monday night as I made an assumption that proved to be in error. Relative to the Modified class and their procedures, since they posted hot lap times, I assumed these were timed hot laps that would line up the heat races which would then be followed by heats using passing points to establish the starting lineup for the feature.
It turns out that the hot laps were just that, hot laps and the times posted were immaterial. It turns out that according to Event Director Bucky Doren, the drivers knew ahead of time that this would be a straight passing points show which explained to me why the lineups for Monday didn't seem to quite match up with the posted hot lap times. At least I got the passing points part right! And that would be the same procedure used on Tuesday.
How the face of Late Model racing has changed in the last twelve to eighteen months. Not very long ago, who would have thought they we could be watching over forty of the top Late Model drivers in the country, racing on a Monday and Tuesday night in the middle of September at a quarter mile Sprint Car track in the heart of Indiana for top prizes of twenty and forty thousand dollars and a total purse of over a quarter of a million dollars! Frankly, it just blows my mind. And certainly XR has been at the forefront of this monumental change in the world of dirt track racing for Late Models.
It has been an unexpectedly hot couple of days here in Indiana with temps over 90 degrees and lots of humidity, making it as uncomfortable as the even the most extreme days of Summer. It appeared that the track crew put a little more water on the track than they had on Monday but eventually the heat and strong wind would make things pretty miserable for those fans sitting in the main grandstand on the East side of the track. It was one of the dirtier nights experienced this year but it did not affect the racing in any way.
After Monday night's show got started quite a bit late and ran later than hoped for, XR officials got on the phone and called the "bullpen" and and overnight trip from central Iowa brought Mike VanGenderen in to function at Race Director on Tuesday night. he was brought in help get the show started on time, move it along better and wrap things up earlier. His imprint was easy to spot as among other things, changes saw the Late Models time three at a time and also eliminate the extra time trial lap as they came out of the pits at full song and took the green immediately. MVG would later proudly point out that all heat races in both classes were done at the same time the first heat took to the track on Monday!
Fields of cars were very comparable to Monday night with three less Late Models and five less Modifieds. Interestingly, there was only one new car in either class and that was a Modified driver that went home and swapped cars.
The track was lightning fast for time trials with the third car out, last night's winner Shane Clanton hammering the wall which then required some quick pit work to get him ready for his heat. Right behind him, Jonathan Davenport would break the track record for Late Models with a quick blast at 13.398 seconds. They would run just four heats in each class and two B Features with an adjusted number of cars coming out of the heats into the mains.
After writing him off as a no show following motor problems last night, Bobby Pierce was a surprise entrant when he returned on Tuesday and he would time well and run a strong second in his heat.
Late Models would go first for their sixty lap main and it was Davenport that took the early lead over Brandon Overton. However, Overton couldn't keep up on this night as he quickly dropped back in the pack and would finish out of the top ten. Pierce would have trouble even getting his car to run and would drop to the back of the pack and then pull off almost immediately with smoke trailing from the car again.
Davenport was in control as he built up a good sized lead over the field. There were two minor yellows in the first eighteen laps and then they would run green the rest of the way. McCreadie would start to assert himself as he raced into second while it was fun to watch Ricky Thornton Jr. thump the wall on lap after lap as he was one of the few running the top side of the track. He was able to race to third and then he seemed to be moving up after the top two.
Davenport still held a comfortable lead with thirty laps to go when things started to change noticeably Davenport began to slow down and McCreadie started to pick up the pace. It would be a two car duel as Thornton Jr couldn't match their pace.
Davenport hit a swarm of about six slower cars, running three wide on at least a couple of occasions. It was clear that Davenport was having trouble driving around them on the outside and his lead really started to shrink. McCreadie got closer and started to show himself to Davenport, running the middle of the track.
Apparently Davenport felt that he must move up the track to try and get by the slower cars and as soon as he did that, McCreadie jumped him, dove low and drove into the lead. At the end, McCreadie was pulling away as Davenport couldn't make the higher lane work and that was his only alternative since McCreadie had driven away on the low side.
For the crowd, it was a popular win with McCreadie visiting victory lane for the first time in quite a while. Point leader of the XR Series, Chris Madden, seemed stuck in the middle of the pack until the last twenty laps or so when he suddenly took off like a rocket and passed Thornton Jr right at the end for third. Twenty for cars started the race and only four weren't around at the finish with only four that were lapped as everyone ran very competitively over the last forty two nonstop ;laps.
As they had on Monday, the Modifieds would wrap up the evening and it would prove to be another run away win for Tyler Nicely. He would start on the outside pole and lead every lap and was never challenged, despite the fact that six yellows for a variety of spins and slowing cars would give those behind him a shot to overtake him. There was an excellent battle for second though, with Thornton Jr and Dillon Nusbaum going back and forth for the runner up position. Thornton Jr would get the jump on several occasions but each time Nusbaum would track him down and make the pass. The race ended on a crazy note with a multi car collision in turn four after the white had been waved so the finishing order had to be established post checkered. There were only two cars that didn't finish this event, despite the yellows.
Racing was done considerably earlier than the previous night and everyone seemed happy with the results. XR officials seemed happy and the fans on hand clearly enjoyed themselves. Surprisingly, there were lots of people in the stands sporting Sprint Car shirts even as the Late Models headlined. Old habits are hard to break!
The Kokomo Speedway proved to be different than what I expected. My vision was to see racing on a very heavy track with a huge berm and much wall banging going on. It proved to be nothing like that and it would be interesting to see if they prep the track like this for the Sprints. However, that's not to say that the racing wasn't good though, by any means. We saw plenty of good hard side by side racing throughout the pack and still saw our share of wall bangers too.
Thanks to Barry Braun, Brandon Brown, Bucky and all the employees of XR and the Kokomo Speedway for their help. XR will conclude their season with five more nights of racing split between three at the Dirt Track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in November and All-Tech Speedway in Florida in December.
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