The Buena Vista Raceway in Alta Iowa hosted the annual Jimmy Squibb Memoria on Wednesday night, June 14th. This event, to honor the memory of one of the sports greatest Hobby Stock fans, would pay the winner of the Hobby Stock main a grand for their efforts on this spectacularly beautiful Wednesday night. The other five classes would be racing in their regularly scheduled events. This would include five IMCA sanctioned divisions along with the local Bomber class.
Has anyone else noticed that the bugs are tremendously bad this year? Not that it has anything at all to do with racing but it sure makes walking around at the track miserable when little flying things are getting in your face and biting your ankles constantly.
And now back to our previously scheduled race. The Squibb Memorial comes right during a very busy time for race tracks in this part of the state and likely for that reason the car count in all classes was down almost to concerning levels. On Wednesday night, there were fifty five cars in six divisions that signed in to race with four of the six divisions having less than double figure numbers. They made a couple of heats out of the Sport Compacts and Sport Mods when they shouldn't have, even though they had nine of each and the Modified count at only four was concerning in that it is only mid June with lots of racing still to be done at lots of tracks yet and it appears that we are almost out of race cars already.
I had a nice talk before the show started with promoter Trent Chinn, who runs things here along with Hancock County in Britt and Spencer at the Clay County Fairgrounds. We agreed that as much as both of us love racing and would attend every race we could, there are realistically too many races and too many tracks racing for everyone to survive. Especially so here in northern and western Iowa where it is possible to race almost every night of the week for three months and there is a track every thirty miles or so along the highway.
The big question though is, if there are too many tracks, which one(s) are going to fall on their own knives and call it quits. And if a track happened to shut down, my sense is that someone would immediately step up to give it another shot, thus negated any possible benefit. Race tracks are like restaurants; there is always someone that has a dream to run one and if one should fail, there is always someone else ready to give it a shot. However, until the herd is thinned, just about everyone struggles with low car counts, half full grandstands and mediocre shows.
On this night, the Hobby Stocks saved the show as eight or nine car races and four or five car heats on this big track just don't cut it, but the Hobby Stocks, as the last event of the night, produces a rousing finish that had everyone talking as they headed to their cars in the parking lots. Perfect!
While Justin Frederick would be scored the leader of all laps, it was much better an event than that would indicate. He did take the early lead on a track where everyone chose to run right on the hub and strategy as to when and where to make a pass proved to be important. Jim Johnson would tuck in behind him in second but the show was watching Cory Probst and Mike Smith as they worked their way to the front after starting in the third and fourth rows respectively. After a first lap spin slowed the action, this race would go green for fourteen laps and eventually it was Probst and Smith that crept up into second and third and they put heavy pressure on Frederick.
A late race spin bunched the field and on the green Smith elected to try the top side of the track, an area that no one was running but was an open lane. It didn't work though, and he lost several positions but was bailed out by another yellow that set up a two lap sprint to the finish. This time Smith got another good run on the outside but he stayed just to the right of leader Frederick while Probst rode his bumper. They came out of the last corner three wide and it was a dash to the line with Frederick holding on by a bumper over Smith with Probst just inches behind in third. This was by far the most exciting race of the night and a good way to wrap up things.
Earlier, Cody Gorden led the opening lap of the Sport Compact feature before Caine Mahlberg drove past him and then drove away for an easy win in a nonstop main for "The Bandit."
The Bombers produced more yellow than almost the rest of the night combined before Wyatt Johnson took the win there.
A four car Modified feature just isn't too exciting no matter how you cut it, but they made things interesting as Dyllan Ricks would lead the first ten laps with Chris Abelsen stalking him before Abelsen would get a nose under Ricks to take the lead and then pull away.
The Sport Mod feature came unglued early when a spin in turn four early in the event collected about half the field with several contenders including point leader Rusty Montague done for the night. With only four cars left running, Jake Simpson would lead the rest of the way for the win.
Stefan Sybesma would take the early lead in the Stock Car feature as he would run a great opening lap, coming from seventh to take the lead before the first lap was completed. However, he was soon challenged by Tim Rupp who also had moved up from that same fourth row. After several attempts to pass didn't work, Sybesma finally slipped off the bottom just enough that Rupp was able to get under him and take over the lead. He would hold that spot for the rest of the race with Sybesma holding off Mike Vandrak for second.
It was a remarkably smooth night of racing. We didn't see the first yellow of the night until the twelfth race of the evening and all heat race action was completed in forty one minutes. The features took a bit longer with driver interviews etc. but all racing was still completed well before 10 pm.
Thanks to Trent Chinn and the rest of his hard working staff for their efforts. It has been a stressful week already for his crew but in the next couple of weeks, things start to slow down some before "The Madness Tour" kicks in toward the end of the month and things really start to get wild.
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