Tuesday, June 13, 2023

Logan Anderson Repeats at the Landus Sport Mod Nationals

 One of the longer running special events for the IMCA Northern Sport Mods is the annual Nationals, sponsored by Landus and held annually at the Hancock County Speedway in Britt Iowa. On Monday night, June 12th, this event would again be held along with a higher purse payoff for the other classes that routinely race at Britt, including Modifieds, Stock Cars, Hobby Stocks and Sport Compacts, all under IMCA sanctioning. 

And for the second straight year, Eddyville's Logan Anderson would ease into town and top some of the state's best who reside in this area to earn the $2,500 top prize after a heated battle in the thirty lap main event. Other winners would include Izac Mallicoat, Kelly Shryock, Mike Smith and Brooke Osler on what was a fast paced Monday night of racing. 

This event is typically held on a Monday night to avoid any other conflicts and to make their best attemp at allowing the best in the Sport Mod division to be on hand. While the number of cars that signed in was nothing to crow about(25), the field itself was full of many of the top Sport Mod drivers from across the state and they would put on a barn burner of a main event. 

Hancock County Speedway is a Trent Chinn promoted track and helping him in the race night effort is Mike VanGenderen, who tells me he has been coming up on Friday nights and helping Trent out with what ever he needs. They have settled on a plan that has both watering before the show throughout the grounds with Trent staying in the infield to do upgrades on the track as the evening progresses while Mike heads up to the tower to function at Race Director for the night. And as you might expect, with MVG running the show the action was quick paced, but more on that later. 

The track was ready to race on when the drivers were called to the line and after a quick hot lap session, racing was underway before 7:15 pm. Other than the Sport Mods, where quality topped quantity, the other four classes racing had quite small numbers on this Monday night and no B Features were needed for any division. After a fast paced set of heat races that were completed in just fifty one minutes, we were ready to go feature racing by 8:15 p.m. on this Monday night. 

There would be three different leaders in the Sport Compact feature which is pretty good considering there were only six of them in the race and they would only go eight laps. First it was Charles Prime who led a lap and then was passed by Logan Kelly. He would lead only one lap before being passed by Osler who would then go on to lead the rest of the way for the win. Osler took the gamble of passing the person who flags much of her racing action as when Kelly isn't racing he is flagging at several northern Iowa tracks but she roared by him nevertheless. He would then settle for second with Noah Bencken finishing third. 

The Stock Car feature would be a good one and while Kelly Shryock would lead the majority of the laps, things got tight for him at the end. Health Tulp would take the initial lead but it would only take Shryock one more lap to come up from the fifth starting spot to duck under Tulp and take over the point. We would then have a long period of green flag racing that would see Shryock pull away but the battle for second was good as Tulp fought to hold off Kevin Opheim, Chanse Hollatz, McCain Jennings and others who would take turns throwing sliders at each other as they exchanged positions. 

Bad luck hit second running Tulp with only four laps to go when when he blew a motor down the front chute and went flying off the first turn, triggering a yellow. There would be one more stoppage in the race when a red flag was triggered when Zayn Feaster went flying off turn four and began a violent series of barrel rolls, perhaps going over five or more times. It was a bad one but he would be OK. It was a tough night for the Stock Cars as Clint Wendel also took a violent flip during a heat race in the same corner, barrel rolling a number of times and ending up with a trip to the hospital. No word on his condition would be available after the races. 

Anyway, Shryock  would hold off Hollatz in the following two lap sprint to the finish and Jennings slipped into third on the final corner. 

Then it would be time for the thirty lap Sport Mod feature. Stats would show that Anderson led all but one of the thirty laps but that would vastly understate the intensity of the race itself. Anderson would start on the outside pole and take the early lead. While he would pull out to an early race cushion, the action was back in the pack as some of the other very fast cars jockeyed their way toward the front. By the halfway point, Anderson would have Colby Fett, Matthew Looft, Taylor Kuehl and Alec Fett chasing him. 

The first half of the race was rather tranquil, but then things started getting intense as the race moved on. Colby Fett and Looft were putting the heat on each other and Anderson with Fett sneaking by to hold the lead for one lap when Anderson got a bit high in the turns. Anderson returned the favor with a slider in turn three that wasn't textbook with Looft also getting a piece of the action as all three threatened to wreck each other. The yellow flew for another incident and all three were "dive bombing" each other as all were annoyed at each other. Perfect!

The last six laps would be a mad scramble with all three slicing and dicing for an opening and while Anderson would be scored the official leader of all six laps, it was never easy. Both Fett and Looft threw wild moves at him off the final corner but he held on for the win. Behind the front three, there were cars flying off the track in all directions as they raced to the finish and scoring had to unsort that mess with Cam Reimers and Kuehl officially rounding out the top five. For Anderson, it would be the second straight year he would roll into town and sneak back to southern Iowa with the victory, no mean feat. 

The Hobby Stocks had a small field of drivers  but they still managed to produce an exciting feature race that saw a late race pass for the win. Drew Barglof would start on the outside pole and take the early lead. As Mike Smith moved up from the third row to challenge, suddenly Brandon Nielsen would pass both of them on the low side of the track to take over the lead.

Eventually Smith would get to second and then the battle would commence with Smith trying everything in his bang of tricks to get by Nielsen but it just wasn't going to happen. Both changed lanes repeatedly as the race almost became a match of checkers with each searching for the right place to be at the correct time. 

Finally Smith found a groove where he raced down across the banking and that would give him the momentum he needed to ease past Nielsen just as they saw the white flag. Brandon tried to fight back on the final lap but it wasn't to be as Smith would add another victory to his early season resume with Barglof settling for third. 

Rookie Modified driver Izac Mallicoat would lead from start to finish to earn his second feature win of the season already as he topped Jeremy Mills and a late arriving Shryock for the win. This race would go nonstop and while Mallicoat would build up an early lead, Mills would be persistent and eventually cut into it to the point that a couple more laps might have seen Mallicoat in trouble, but the checkered waved before that happened and Mills had to settle for second. 

As would be expected, with MVG calling the shots in the tower, things moved at a fast pace and the final checkered flag would wave well before 10 pm. I enjoyed hearing Chad Meyer on the call and he did the features from the infield, a different perspective for him. California Super Fan Ron Rodda was on hand as he makes his annual trek to the Hawkeye State, taking in many of the tracks here before he sets his course back West. It was a good night of racing with a couple of very interesting mains. I wish however, that there would have been a few more cars in the pits and a few more bodies in the grandstand. However, we are in that time of the year when there is so much racing going on that both drivers and fans have to make some tough choices. Thanks again to Trent and Chinn Promotions. 

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