The Iowa Dirt Nationals at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway continued on Friday night, October 15th with round number two for the Stock Cars, Modifieds, Hobby Stocks and Sport Mods. Night two found the Four Stocks replacing the Late Models while the American Iron Racing Series was also a part of the show.
Car Counts increased with over thirty more drivers in the four core classes making their first appearances of the weekend. Throw in twenty nine Four Stocks and there were one hundred and seventy eight drivers in attendance for night number two. The AIRS cars also had about eighteen or so cars also to add to the fun. However, the AIRS cars also had one of their rockier nights in memory, as they had several hard collisions with cars going off on the wrecker left and right.
The program format would be the same as on Thursday night with heats for all classes, B Features for those classes that needed them and finally, feature races for all classes. It was the draw/redraw format used once again with each position finisher redrawing against those drivers that finished in the same position in their respective event. The Stock Cars topped the chart as six heats were necessary in their class and the Mods, Sport Mods and Stock Cars all had enough cars to warrant a pair of B Features.
It was another miserable night for dirt track racing in Northeastern Iowa on Friday. It might have been a few degrees warmer than Thursday and the wind wasn't blowing quite as hard, but it was still steel gray with occasional spits of ice and rain present during much of the afternoon. It never really threatened the racing program but made it so miserable that again, just the very toughest of fans came out to watch and the stands were pretty barren. Again, let's hope that lots of people bought the pay per view to make this race viable.
With twenty six preliminary events just to set the feature race lineups, and discounting the AIRS cars which I consider to be an exhibition event, you expected it to be a late night but with the hopes that some of the down time from Thursday night would be eliminated. That, however, didn't prove to be the case.
For some reason, the Four Stocks got the call to run their feature race first and unfortunately, they picked this night to have a bad one. They were down from twenty nine to twenty four to start the race due to previous mechanical issues and wrecks in their qualifying events but they made matters worse in the feature with a five yellow fiasco that forced starter Doug Haack to stick a fork in their race two laps early when the event droned on and on.
Josh Starr would lead the opening lap before Joe Lafrenz, who would start beside Starr in the front row, would make a pass for the lead. The rest of the event would see Starr chase Lafrenz closely but never make a repass for the lead. The top two would run away from the pack while most behind them spent the rest of the race spinning, trying to knock down the walls and or slamming into each other. At the premature conclusion, cheered as loudly as any win all night, about half the field was already on the sidelines minus wheel, fenders etc.
Lafrenz would finish with Starr close behind as the top two ran the cushion with power that no one else seemed to have. Lukas Rick would finish a distant third.
Sport Mods would square up things on Friday night as after a yellow plagued event on Thursday, they ran off a much smoother feature race on Friday night. Only one yellow would slow the event and all twenty four starters would be around at the finish. It was also the most domination shown by a winner as Jason Roth, who started on the outside pole, would lead the entire race and really not be seriously challenged until near the end when Tony Olson would get close enough to let him know he was there.
For most of the race, Roth would have a full corner on the field until near the end when Olson would make it fairly close at the finish. However, Roth was never really in any danger throughout the race of losing the lead. Logan Anderson would make another charge up through the field, finishing third after starting tenth on the grid.
The Stock Cars would be next with twenty five laps of racing worth five grand to one skillful driver. And that driver would be Dallon Murty as for the second straight night he would top the main event and earn the big bucks. With nearly fifty quality Stock Car drivers on hand, the odds of winning back to back would seem remote, but that didn't stop Murty from doing exactly that.
He would start fourth on the grid and quickly move into second as he tucked in behind Dylan Thornton who had the early lead. Murty had some ground to make up first and he would gradually catch Thornton . Murty would experiment with different lines around the track and attack each corner differently but he would soon catch Thornton and it seemed Dylan was powerless to stop the Murty charge as Dallon kept chasing until he found a line that worked and made the winning pass on lap fourteen.
Two yellows after that would pack up the field but each time Murty would control the point and gradually would pull away at the end. Thornton would complete a good run by finishing second with Tom Berry Jr third. Strong runs by Dusty Vis, Jason Doyle and Cade Richards were all negated by various problems. Kaden Reynolds would be spectacular as he came from twenty second to fifth and ran a line up against the concrete wall that no one else would even consider doing.
Cody Staley and David Crimmins had a nice battle for the lead in the Hobby Stock feature. Staley would lead the opening lap before being passed on the tall side of the track by Crimmins who would then lead the next ten laps. Meanwhile, Staley was all over Crimmins, looking to his inside on lap after lap. Made even tougher holding the lead was the fact that this was another clunker race, with six yellow flags to bog it down. This put more pressure on Crimmins who had to fight off Staley every time the green would again appear.
Finally, Staley would get a good run at Crimmins and retake the lead and despite David trying his best to regain the top spot, Staley would hold him off. For Staley it was success in his first ever appearance at Dubuque with Crimmins a close second and Mark Neis third.
It was the wee hours of the morning before the Modifieds, somehow chosen to race last, would hit the track for their feature event in front of what was left of the frozen crowd. This race would see Jeremiah Hurst take the early lead and hold the top spot for the first five laps until he was passed by Brandon Schmitt with Hurst then fading back into the pack.
The battle for the lead would be a two car race as Schmitt had a hot running Kelly Shryock right on his tail. Shryock had moved up from the third row and really put the pressure on Schmitt, nearly getting by on a couple of occasions as they raced off the corners. There were just enough yellows to keep the field bunched and each time Schmitt would fight off Shryock for the lead. A good battle for third saw Jason Wolla, Dave Cain and Joel Rust batting for that spot.
The final yellow was on lap ten and this would allow the last ten laps to be run off green to the finish. This helped Schmitt who pulled away slightly from Kelly and he would go on for the win over a strong running Shryock. Wolla would take third.
The hope was that after the "learning" night of Thursday, the show would run a bit smoother on Friday night. Unfortunately, Friday night's event even ran longer than the previous night with the final checkered around 12:30 am. For the second straight night it seemed like the yellows were plentiful and the recovery time by the safety crew slow and tedious. With just about everyone pitted outside the track and many up the hill, the exchange time between heats with race cars crossing back and forth across the track does slow things down. And unlike most events where after a practice night, there are no other nights that feature hot laps, here they run hot laps for all classes every night, something I think over reach. Especially when the first cars hit the track for hot laps at 6 pm and the first race doesn't actually start for a full hour! That's just too much wasted time for me, especially on a cold night in October. If they're going to hot lap every one, then cars should hit the track much earlier than they did.
For the second straight night, the track remained in good shape for racing, especially considering the amount of races and amount of laps on the track. And on this night, once the first green flag flew, the track was not touched the rest of the night and it still remained racy throughout!
Again, thanks to Darkside Promotions and XR Special Events for putting on this show. Any racing at this time of the year is a gamble, with the weather being more temperamental each year it seems. By the way, while it was cold, we were racing in Iowa while at home I saw a picture from Friday morning that showed just about three inches of fresh snow on the ground!
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