The Wild West Shootout continued on Sunday afternoon, January 8th for round two at the Vado Speedway Park in Vado New Mexico. Despite a stout field of cars in all three classes, the Sunday action produced two repeat winners from opening round action on Saturday as both Jonathan Davenport and Kris Jackson won their respective feature races with only Dereck Ramirez visiting victory lane for the first time.
With still over one hundred and fifty cars signing in for the three division racing, only the Modified count was down with three less cars due to problems on Saturday while both the Late Model and X Mods fields were of exactly the same number of racers.
With the car counts similar, the program was identical to Saturday's event with the same number of heats, B Features, the Pro Power Dash and the three main events. On a quicker track than for Saturday, Kyle Larson and Johnny Scott would top the two qualifying sessions with Larson's 14.218 second lap the quickest of the day and a half second quicker than from the opener on Saturday. Clayton Stuckey would win the Pro Power Dash and just like on Saturday, he would opt to race instead of collecting the cash and calling it a night. Despite the large amounts of money available to the racers this year in the form of purses, just as many drivers as not are here to test out their cars for the 2023 racing season and see how they compare to the best in the sport and the only way to do that is to race them.
Once again, the program would start right at the 5 pm advertised time with X Mod heats to start out the night. Five of those would be followed by five Modified heats and four Late Model heats. They being smoothly run, the B Features would supply more in the way of yellow flag racing with desperation at trying to make a main event cause some to over drive and with the resulting and predictable yellow flags.
The Late Model feature would be first up with Garrett Alberson on the pole and Jonathan Davenport starting beside him. Davenport would get the jump and lead the opening lap, followed by the next thirty nine also. While it may sound boring for one driver to lead the entire race, it was actually quite an entertaining race. And the reason it was so was that Kyle Larson quickly moved into second and refused to accept the second place. Davenport and Larson put on quite the show as they jockeyed for position and took turns trying different lines on the track, trying to outguess their talented opponent. They tried high, they tried low, they tried slide jobs on each other and while the final result was unchanged, the action was highly entertaining.
And as hard as they were battling, they still didn't run away from the field as both Brandon Sheppard and Bobby Pierce stayed right in the running. In fact, when the two leaders got into traffic, it quickly became a four car group racing for the lead. Yellows on lap fourteen and sixteen for incidents involving Cade Dillard and Don Shaw slowed things, but each time the racing broke out again it was a war of nerves between perhaps the two best out there right now. And while the announcers raved that we wer seeing the race of the year already in January, I didn't think it quite that spectacular but it certainly was a good one.
Larson's late shot at the lead with about five to go saw him jump the cushion in turn four and that left no doubt that Davenport would drive on for the win. Pierce got past Sheppard for fourth and for the second straight night, Ricky Weiss had a solid run to complete the top five.
The X Mod feature would see the most dominating drive so far of the series as it took a mighty charge from Kris Jackson to come all the way from seventeenth to take the win. Jackson had to come from the fifth starting position to just win a B Feature and start the main event after a bad heat race run. However, he was up to the task in a main that saw four different leaders in a division that has seen a lot of passing so far this week in the mains.
Jimmy Ray would be the early leader for the second straight night while bad luck saw pole starter Donovan Flores break a rear suspension and not complete a lap. Ray would lead the first seven laps before he would be overtaken by Reece Solander for the lead. Solander would then hold on to the top spot before Jesse Haynie, in his second strong run this weekend, would drive into the top spot.
However, Jackson was coming on strong with his car nailed to the inside groove and passing drivers with ease as he charged to the top spot. On lap fifteen he drove under Haynie to take over the lead and would then pull away from the field.
A late yellow for a spinning Sherm Barnett would set up a two lap dash to the finish with Jackson pulling away with ease. However, Andy Bryant, who was running fourth, would take advantage of that late yellow to pass both Solander and Haynie to take second with Nate Reinke completing the top five. The top four drivers would finish just as they had on Saturday, with Reinke substituting for Scott Bintz to be the first WISSOTA car across the line.
A major upset nearly took place in the Modified feature when Tom Berry Jr would lead the first twenty laps to nearly steal the win. While Berry Jr is a crack IMCA driver, his experience in open motor competition is limited but for the second straight night he showed to be plenty fast and while he may have been disappointed to not grab the win, two fop five finishes in his first weekend is something to note.
Berry Jr might have pulled off the win except for a strong run by Dereck Ramirez who followed Berry Jr for most of the race and then as Berry Jr seemed to get a bit loose on the cushion, drove under him with only four laps to go to take the win. Berry Jr tried to fight back but jumped the cushion and would settle for second. A very good battle behind them saw Rodney Sanders hold off Dan Ebert and Tyler Davis to complete the top five with both Ebert and Sanders both recording their second top fives this weekend.
An excellent race track was again provided for the drivers and this program would also be completed just after 9:30 pm, making for another early evening for the fans.
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