Friday night, October 7th was the opening night for the nineteenth annual Fall Classic at “The Big O”, Ogilvie Raceway in Ogilvie Minnesota. Traditionally one of the biggest end of the season events and certainly in the car count, this is one of the few races other than the WISSOTA 100 where all eight divisions that are sanctioned by WISSOTA get together and race during one extremely packed weekend of racing action. Despite the fact that Pure Stocks and Late Models are not among the weekly offerings at Ogilvie, those classes are also brought in for this weekend”s event so race fans can get a sampling of everything in terms of classes that WISSOTA offers if they are so inclined to do so.
It is also one of the last races on the WISSOTA calendar of santioned events with the last racing weekend on the calendar being next week so on those occasions when national point titles are still hanging in the balance, this weekend's racing can go a long way toward deciding national titles. As it turns out this year, most of the titles have already been mathematically decided, so there isn't quite the drama in that regard as in some years.
The weekend started off with bone chillling temperatures. However, even with temps pushing the freezing mark, it didn't seem to slow down the competitors as another gigantic field of cars signed in to race.
In all, two hundred and ninety six drivers in those eight classes signed in to race, only ten off the record turnout which was held just last year. In terms of numbers, the biggest field was in the MidMods where sixty four signed in to race and the smallest was the Pure Stocks, understandable since there aren't really any local tracks in this area that run the class. They had thirteen cars which made up two heats.
The biggest drop in car count from last year was in the Streets and MidMods where nine less drivers took part while the Modifieds had the biggest increase with thirteen more drivers than last year. There were drivers on hand from as far away as Montana and two Canadian Provinces.
I am not a fan of one feature events that are stretched over two days but this is one of those rare events that logistics simply wouldn't allow the completion of two full shows, given the large field of cars on hand. As it is, they do a great job of moving the show along here, especially appreciated given how cool the evening was. They started about ten minutes after 7 pm and by 11:30 pm all racing was completed. This involved thirty three heat races, most of the distance of ten laps. Passing points were used in all divisions on this night, which then almost required with large heat race fields that ten lap races be run.
There were a number of drivers on hand that ran in more than one division but the only driver to win heat races in two classes was Shane Sabraski.
Brock Gronwald, a MidMod driver with some great wins including at Bristol, was on hand again with a Modified instead of the MidMod that he had run most of the season. He told me that he still had that car but was planning on focusing his efforts on the Mod going forward except if the Wild West Shootout allows the MidMods to race competitively without a lot of changes in 2023 in which case he might take the MidMod to New Mexico. He is running a Lethal chassis from a drive in Ohio that he obtained the car from and has had it sitting in his shop all Summer, waiting to get it ready to race while he continued to race the MidMod.
Gavin Rowland, one of the best local Street Stock racers, made only his second start of the year this weekend. The car is for sale but since they live only five miles from this track, they felt the need to come out and join the racing this weekend. They hope to sell the car and they are going to try some other types of motorsports competition next year, just to change things up a bit. They will start with some ice racing this Winter for example.
Once Kyle Dykhoff clinched the Street Stock national title, he stepped out of his car and turned it over to Eric Riley, who was driving it here this weekend. Dykhoff is rumored to be moving up to a different class for next year.
The weekend has started off very badly for Zach Beaulieu. He flipped his Street Stock during practice last night. Not willing to call it a weekend, they took the car back to Wisconsin, worked on it and had it back out to race on Friday. However, more issues occured during his heat race with some kind of rear end trouble and he went off the track on the back end of a wrecker.
Another flip victim on the night was Mod Four driver Chris McClain. He came off the edge of the track wrong, dug in and barrel rolled twice during his heat race on Friday. Fortunately, he brings his race car to the track on a roll back, which was needed to get the car both off the track and back to his shop.
Even though the racing season is winding down, the tech folks are not backing down in their enforcment of the rules. There were six disqualifications handed out tonight, including the top two finishers in one of the Pure Stock heats.
A couple of the harder crashes of opening night involved Winnipeg's Scott Greer who had a nice run going in a Late Model heat when he pounded the wall on the front stretch and the other really hard collision saw J.T. Johnson and Ryan Kostreba get together in the Super Stocks when Johnson didn't see the spinning Kosteba and hit him at full speed, obviously doing much damage to both cars.
Using passing points really changes things up for the lineups for the main events. For example, Kennedy Swan started on the pole and won a MidMod heat, yet because there was so much passing going on in some of the other heats, she will start sixteenth in the main event on Saturday night. Using the draw/redraw format, she would obviously start somewhere in the first three or four rows of that same race but overall, especially when the fields of cars are so large, passing points still seems a more fair way of doing business.
As you can imagine, with nearly three hundred race cars on the grounds, the pit area gets pretty expansive with all the regular pit area jammed plus the field behind the back chute that gets utilized for this event. Getting around proves problematic so I need to thank Princeton and North Central Speedway tech man, “Big Kenny”, who by the way is in his forty third year of teching race cars, for giving me a lift for that one last “go round” to check up on the late arrivals on Friday.
Saturday night all the B Features and eight main events will be contested.
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