On Thursday night, October 13th, the opening night of three nights of racing for the Iowa Dirt Nationals was held at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway on the West end of Dubuque just off highway 20. Hosted by Darkside Promotions (Tim Current and Ryan Duhme) and Race XR, Thursday night's show would feature five classes of cars in action, highlighted by the first of three nights of Stock Car action where five thousand dollars would go to the winner on each night.
Also racing would be Modifieds, Sport Mods and Hobby Stocks for their first of three consecutive nights of racing with the Late Models also putting in a one night appearance on Thursday as well
. Good money would be on the line for all classes with the top prize increasing each night. But the stars of this weekend's show would clearly be the Stock Cars as along with the excellent prize money being offered, this would be a race would drivers could accumulate points as they work toward the big XR finale at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in November. In fact, these three shows would be the last ones offering points before that big finale and for the first twelve in points, they are automatically locked into the one hundred feature at Vegas, paying fifty thousand dollars to win.
An excellent field of one hundred and fifty seven cars would sign in to race on Thursday night with more expected as the weekend approaches as each night is a stand alone event that allows drivers that can't get off work etc. for the Thursday night show to still be able to do some racing this weekend.
There is not nice way to say it; the weather on Thursday night was brutal. Not only was it very cold and even spitting a few drops of rain from time to time but the wind was unrelenting. And to top it off, the wind was screaming right into the grandstand at 20 mph and above. It was miserable. Clearly, Darkside and XR should be commended for even racing on such a miserable night and while the pay per view might actually be helped by such tough conditions, this was a night when only the most dedicated of race fans would tough this out. There would be no casual fans accidently showing up on this night, for sure.
For this event, they have just a few few cars pitted in the infieldj with the blacktopped parking area to the Southeast of the track used for pit parking this weekend. This works out great for the teams and with all the Fair buildings to block the wind, probably the most comfortable place on the grounds this weekend. It also gives the race fans a chance to watch some of the pit action up close if they so desire.
One of the drivers on hand to chase the money and points this weekend was Jesse Sobbing from western Iowa. This will be a big weekend for Sobbing on a couple fronts. He is currently thirteenth in the XR Stock Car points and a good showing this weekend would vault him into the top twelve in points and lock him in at Vegas. However, he blew up the motor in his own Stock Car recently and hasn't gotten it back yet, so is racing with a borrowed car this weekend.
He is also chasing points in the Malvern Bank Late Model series and their finale is Saturday at I-80 Speedway. He currently leads those points by only ten with the point champion to earn ten grand so much is on the line for him this weekend. Things would not start out swimmingly for him later however, as he would fail to get out of B Feature in the Stock Cars.
I'm going to be very honest here. It was so cold that my hands turned into popsicles early and I wasn't able to keep as good of notes as normal so bare with me on this night for somewhat less than detailed information.
Hot laps took some time on this night and the show didn't get started until about 6:50 pm, almost an hour after hot laps were scheduled to start. All five classes ran heat races and the fields were large enough that B Features were needed for Sport Mods, Stock Cars and Modifieds. These were all run through as quickly as possible utilizing the one spin rule for both heats and B Features but for some reason, perhaps the drivers weren't as well schooled at this as some places, many just didn't move until the yellow flew so the number of slowdowns seemed larger than for most one spin rule shows.
The Late Model feature would be first out and this was a good race with a close finish. Jaden Fryer, who I believe to be a rookie driver in the Late Models, very nearly won the contest tonight. He started on the outside pole and sprinted to an early lead after battling early with Darren Mish. Behind them, Jeff Aikey, Joel Callahan and Mitch Manternach battled for position.
Fryer would maintain the lead through two yellows, both early in the race and with the last eighteen laps going green, he was able to build up some distance on the field. Ron Klein, who started seventh, would pick up the pace, finally getting by Callahan and then gradually starting to rope in Fryer. Fryer would approach the back of the pack and this seemed to slow him some, and Klein was able to reel him in with only about five laps to go. Klein would drive past Fryer and take over the lead and expand it in the last few laps to secure the win. Fryer would hold on for second over a late charging Nick Marolf.
The Sport Mods had a bad night in their feature. The potential was there for a good race with Tyler Soppe, Logan Veloz and Tony Olson battling for the front spot and putting on an entertaining race but every time they started to mix it up, the yellow would fly again and the race would get interrupted
In total, the yellow would fly eight times during what was supposed to be a fifteen lap race and that ended up getting trimmed by a couple of laps due to the high number of yellows.
The last two laps would provide a thrilling battle between Veloz, Olson and a late arriving Logan Anderson as they went three wide. Veloz would hold off the other two and this could have been a real good race, except that it was broken up way too many tiimes.
Johnny Spaw would start on the pole for the twenty five lap Stock Car feature but it would be Nathan Ballard who would take the early lead until eventually challenged by Dallon Murty who started in row two. They would exchange a few slide jobs before Murty would secure the lead but he had Benji LaCrosse then challenging him. They would battle back and forth, throwing some sliders of their own but no matter who challenged, it always seemed the Murty came out on top and at the end, he would hold off LaCrosse and Nick Buckarma for the win. Twenty five laps for five grand; not bad work at all.
By the Hobby Stock feature, I had lost all feeling in my hands so was writing with my teeth but I managed to catch a good three car battle between Nick Schliem, Andrew Burk and Jimmy Doescher for the win. Earlier, it had been Daniel Wauters battling with Burk for the lead with Burk finally passing him and then Wauters spun to take himself out of the battle.
A late yellow set up a three lap sprint between the drivers with Doescher sneaking by on the top side of the track to grab the lead on the last lap and edge out Schliem and Burk,
The Modifieds wrapped up the evening for those tough ones left in the grandstand. It was kind of an odd race in that there was very little passing with the top drivers seemingly holding their positions from start to finish. Early in the evening, it seemed that Spencer Diercks had great speed and he showed that in the main event. It didn't hurt that he drew the pole either and with a nonstop twenty lap race the product, he pulled away and had no challenges as he drove to the win.
Kelly Shryock gained one position to finish second with Bone Larson driving the Snyder #98 to a third place finish. Besides going nonstop, all twenty four drivers that started the race were still on the track at the finish.
On a night when a crisp, quick show would have been oh so nice, it was anything but. Despite the best efforts of management to move the show along, it just seemed to be one of those nights when the yellow flew a lot, there were a lot of bad starts that needed to be called back, drivers were having a tough time lining up, every wreck needed multiple wreckers and much time to disengage the participants, and the wreckers seemed to get lost on the grounds from time to time. All this amounted to a show that lasted until almost Midnight. And no matter how entertaining the races, it's just hard to enjoy the action when it is so miserable.
The hope is that it will warm on Friday and everyone will have gotten the first night jitters over. It was nice to have both "Big Boy" and Jerry Mackey on hand calling the action and that helped pass the time on a couple of those multicar wrecks that seemed to take forever to separate.
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