Friday night, October 20th, the thirteenth annual Topless Nationals kicked off at the Ogilvie Raceway near Ogilvie Minnesota.
Started on a whim those thirteen years ago, this race was first conceived as a fund raiser during Breast Cancer Awareness month and also as a fun time for race crews and fans alike to bid a fond farewell to the racing season with a fun event. To make it different, the classes were all required to remove the roofs from their race cars and run them topless. This certainly gives them a different look and there are a number of events like this across the country when the tops come off for a week to produce something different for the fans.
With three different sanctioning bodies operating within a reasonable travel distance of this track, the Topless race has always been run under more open rules with cars from each sanctioning body running their own rules and tires and for the most part this has worked out all right. There was a bit of a rub when it came to running Stock Cars against Street Stocks one year and that rub may reappear again before this weekend is over as after a lull of many years, Stock Cars were again allowed to run with the Street Stocks. More on that later.
For the first time, this race even had a sponsor as the local vocational school, Pine Technical and Community College, came on board to sponsor the race this year. The track gets in the spirit of this event as all the walls surrounding the race track are painted bright pink for this weekend along with all the "dreaded infield tractor tires" so there can be no excuse for hitting them this weekend.
There are costume contests for both kids and adults, trick or treating in the pits before the races on Saturday and even a contest for the best decorated race car. This year the racing teams went all out on this and at least half the field had some kind of decoration on their cars whether it be lights, skeletons riding along or all sorts of ghostly monsters sharing the cockpit with the drivers. There was even a first this year when starter Brian Reidemann was forced to trigger a yellow flag during a heat race when some ghostly monster fell out of a race car and laid in turn one. Fortunately no one ran over the beast but that was a first for me.
Apparently there are still a lot of race teams and fans that aren't ready to pack it in for the 2023 racing season. Blessed by spectacular weather on Friday, a huge car count was on hand for the opening night of this event. A total of two hundred and eighty nine cars signed in to race in the seven classes presented on Friday. All classes except the Mod Fours showed increased car counts from last year's event and with both the Hornets and Late Models returned to the show after being absent from this event for several years, that put an additional fifty cars in the pits just between those two classes. The Hornets, by the way, are the only class that doesn't have to remove the roofs as their roofs are part of the integrity of the vehicles and to remove their roofs would make them too dangerous to drive.
The largest class on hand was the B Mods which are a combination of the WISSOTA Midwest Mods, the USRA B Mods and the IMCA Sport Mods and there were a mind numbing eighty three of them on hand. Cars from all three of the sanctioning bodies were also seen in the Mods, Hornets and Street Stocks while the Super Stocks and Mod Fours are classes unique to WISSOTA and no other Late Models other than WISSOTA cars tried to race on this night.
This is that time of the year when race cars are bought and sold and there were evidences of a number of drivers racing in different classes with newly purchased equipment and quite a variety of drivers on hand that had never raced at Ogilvie before. Ogilvie is one of the few tracks that could pull in such a big field of race cars even though in all their pre race advertising there was never one mention of just exactly what the purse was and what the various finishing positions would pay. Ogilvie can get by with that while a lot of tracks could not. At this point of the year, there are still a bunch of drivers that want one more race and with such beautiful weather promised for the weekend, they came out in droves. Consider that for a race where no one knew what they were racing for, drivers from five states and two Canadian provinces were on hand in the pits Friday night!
It was a surprise to me when the race format for the evening featured the old school draw/redraw method of qualifying when this race just begs to be a passing points show. I was particularly surprised at this as they are familiar with passing points in this area, having used that format for several races here this year and with such a big field of drivers, passing points are so much more fair. As an example, soon to be crowned WISSOTA national champion in both the Modifieds and Super Stocks, Shane Sabraski,drew badly for both classes and failed to make the feature in either class, despite the fact he moved up several positions but not just far enough to make the cut off. It will be interesting to see what the sixty time feature winner can do, racing through B Features on Saturday.
The program was a monster sized one on Friday with thirty four heat races in all to set the field for B Features and main events on Saturday night. The drivers were pretty well disciplined on Friday with there not being an over abundance of yellow flags, despite the unfamiliarity of many drivers with the track and a number driving new or different equipment. That is, however, except in the B Mods. There were six yellows in the first lap of the first B Mod heat and things got so bad that Reidemann sent the whole field to the infield for a "time out."
The next heat was brought on the track and they raced their event and then the first heat returned from the infield to finish out their race. It seemed to work and the first heat only produced one more yellow before they finally finished things off.
The track was super slick, as you can imagine with that many races but it never did take rubber and drivers were still running multiple grooves right to the end. Best of all, once they threw the green flag for the first heat, they never touched the track after that, even to mist it or do other quick touch ups and it remained fine with very little dust also.
No hot laps were held on Friday as Thursday was reserved as the practice night for this event with over one hundred and forty cars on hand for that alone. Racing would start just a few minutes late on Friday as the track was just a little bit too slick to start without a bit of wheel packing. However, after that it was nonstop racing and this was important as they had live music waiting to hit the stage. All racing was done before 11:30 pm which was very good I thought, considering the number of races to be held.
They will start two hours earlier on Saturday with B Features and main events in all classes on the schedule.
My only complaint is with them letting the Stock Cars race with the Street Stocks as the Stock Cars have a clear competitive advantage and it amounts to a slap in the face for your weekly competitors that have supported you all year to force them to race the final event of the year at a disadvantage. The USRA Modifieds also have a big motor advantage over the WISSOTA and IMCA cars but the area drivers always seen to be able to overcome that, so we will see what Saturday brings for the Stock Cars and Street Stocks.
There was much talk in the pits on Friday with the announcement that the Wagamon family, the owners of Ogilvie Raceway, have obtained a five year contract to take over the promoting of the nearby Princeton Speedway, a track that races on Friday nights. The Princeton Speedway was primarily an IMCA track with only WISSOTA Super Stocks and Mod Fours racing there and all other classes under the IMCA banner. With Ogilvie being a full WISSOTA track, there was much talk about just what classes would be racing there next year. Wagamons have been very successful promoters at Ogilvie after they purchased the track several years ago from the original owners and they are expected to be just as successful with their new venture at Princeton. I am told they are anxious to bring in their equipment and get to work with some reshaping of the track and possible widening of the corners of the quarter mile among their first tasks.
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