The storms finally ended, the North wind started howling and the temperature dropped markedly for racing on Wednesday night, July 16th at the Huset's Speedway in Brandon South Dakota. It was Silver Dollar Nationals week for the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series but Wednesday night was reserved for the Ben Nothdurft Memorial featuring the Late Models of the Tri-State Late Model Series. Along with the Late Models the Stock Car Crown Summer Series would also be presenting a full show. In recent years, this has been the opening night act for the Silver Dollar week and while many of the Lucas Oil teams were in the parking lot working on their cars, the Tri-State Late Models and Stock Cars would be testing the black dirt oval of Huset's.
The is no getting around the fact that on this brisk and very overcast Wednesday, the track itself was the major story line for the racing. Everything that happened during the course of the evening was predicated on track conditions and the racing action and everything else that happened was a direct result of what the racing conditions were.
We were told that during the storms of Tuesday night, one and six tenth inches of rain fell at Huset's in Brandon. That is a lot of rain for any track to recover from and with absolutely no drying conditions(sun or heat), the track was a mess come Wednesday.
The track crew opted to leave the track alone as they didn't touch it until around 5 pm on Wednesday when vehicles started to roll in the surface. Obviously the track crew knows their surface far better than I and I will not second guess the way they prepared the track and maybe there was just too much precipitation for them to work any kind of magic. But the bottom line was that the track was a mess with mud from top to bottom which never did get better, even as the evening wore on. When four wheel drives get stuck in the mud on the bottom side of the track, even at the end of a long night of racing , you get an idea just how bad the track conditions were. Why they waited so long to start rolling in the track, I don't know but perhaps they were hoping the track would dry more on its own before they started to wheel pack. That didn't happen on this night and with the long period needed to make the track even somewhat serviceable, the first race didn't hit the track until almost 8 pm.
The bad thing is that the conditions kept us from seeing a decent racing program and much worse, resulted in a considerable amount of torn up racing equipment. Of course, no one puts a gun to the head of the drivers and tells them they must race and there were a few that did opt out of competition, but most feel that once they are at the track, they want to race, no matter how bad things are. And there was considerable money up for grab on Wednesday, with the Late Models racing for a top prize of six grand while the Stock Cars raced for three thousand dollars to the winner. And let's not forget about series points that certainly some of the competing drivers were interested in, but require racing no matter how bad things get.
I was told that the purse for this entire program was guaranteed by sponsors, and if so, that might be a large reason why the race was held come Hell or high water and that Huset's wasn't too concerned whether there were any fans in the stands or not.
The program order was changed several times to reflect the track conditions and how well the track was starting to roll in with the Stock Cars running their heats before the Late Models ever hit the track for qualifying.
there were forty six Late Models on hand with virtually all the regulars from the Tri-State Series in attendance along with a number of other "wild card" drivers that showed up to be a part of this program. The drivers qualified by group with six heats set by time trial with a straight up format that did make a good qualifying attempt nearly mandatory. As the drivers ran the track it got faster and Billy Leighton was the quickest of all at 12.897 seconds, just about three tenth off the track record for the Tri-State cars.
Three drivers came out of each of the six heats and two out of each of the twin B Features. It appeared that the heat winners redrew amongst themselves and the second place finishers also redrew amongst themselves for feature starting spots. Two Tri-State provisional starters completed the twenty four car field.
The thirty lap main was marked by five yellow flags with most being for multi car incidents, a couple of which made significant differences in how the feature played out. Leighton redrew the pole and took the early lead over Lance Matthees. The first eight laps ran green until there was a slowing car that bottled up the back chute exit, the cars started stacking up and nearly blocked the track and leader Leighton was one that spun.
He was able to restart but because he had stopped, he was relegated to the rear of the field. He then pulled off soon afterward. This gave the lead to Tad Pospisil who had passed Matthees for second. Blair Nothdurft and Jesse Sobbing had moved into position behind those drivers.
Only one more lap was completed before the next significant accident happened. Matthees was hooked from behind by Sobbing with the two getting locked together and sliding to a halt in turn three. Charlie McKenna came flying in under speed and ran into Sobbing in a violent collision, lifting Sobbing's car high off the ground. Both of those two were eliminated and Matthees just rode around at the back of the field for the rest of the race.
That made Nothdurft the main competition for Posipsil and they raced hard for the lead spot. By the halfway point of the race, Lee Grosz had moved up from the eighth starting spot into third and he was challenging Nothdurft for that spot. Grosz eventually got past Nothdurft for second and made the stiffest challenge to Pospisil of the night, drawing to within a couple car lengths as they were finally able to string together a few laps of green flag action.
One last yellow when the Ward family was stacked up together on the front chute set up a final ten laps of green flag racing. Nothdurft got a good restart and edged past Grosz to retake second but he had nothing for the leader and as badly as Nothdurft wanted to win this race for his grandfather, it was Pospisil that controlled the end of the race and took the win. The top three remained the same with Jeffrey Larson and Josh Leonard completing the top five. Fifteen of the starters completed the contest but most looked like they had been in a war.
I was under the impression that the Dirt Crown Summer Stock Car Series was an IMCA series but that appeared to not be the case. Yes, there were IMCA cars in attendance but there were also a number of USRA Stock Cars on hand, running on their American Racer tires. There were also fifteen WISSOTA Street Stocks that were allowed to race also. Despite bringing a butter knife to a gun fire, the Street Stock drivers, most of then from other parts of South Dakota, apparently wanted the opportunity to race at Huset's once and actually it was a good thing there were so many of them, otherwise the field might have been a little on the light side. I expected more of the IMCA "heavy hitters" to be on hand for a three grand to win show but perhaps the rules package kept them away.
In any event, the Stock Cars were the "grunt class" on this night, having to do the heavy lifting when it came to packing the track and they also got the privilege of racing first, when the mud was flying at its worst. They drew for their starting positions and ran four heats with the top five making the show. One huge B Feature, with over a half dozen DNS's , set the rest of the running order for their twenty four car field.
Ferlin Sheridan and Hayden Bender started on the front row but Cadyn Wessels made a great move on the opening lap, ducking under both to take the early lead. One of the highlights of the evening though, was watching Sheridan battle for the lead in his classic 1957 Chevy. He eventually would get roughed up enough though that he would call it a night.
The Stock Car portion of the program was marked by some very over aggressive driving, even so by drivers that I had seen race previously at other tracks in not such a manner but the racing, as a whole, was brutal in this class on Wednesday.
Wessels led the first seven laps of this race and through the first three yellow flags. He was attacked during this time by several different drivers, and attacked is probably the correct description. Finally, in one of the rare clean passes of the night, Curt Lund drove by Wessels to take over the lead.
Six more yellows would slow the contest with more and more drivers retiring to the infield as their equipment either gave out on them or they got wrecked. At the end, there was just as many cars in the infield as left on the track.
But Lund withstood all the challenges and all the hubris of the many restarts to take the win. A former Sprint Car driver of note, Lund's last win at Huset's came back in the 1990's driving a winged car. Justin Luinenburg moved up from ninth to finish a close second with Wessels hanging on for third.
One of the highlights of the race was the steady charge of Maria Broksieck. She started sixteenth on the grid, kept her nose clean and raced into the top five late in the race. Her secret was to stay out of the messes, drive her car straight in the corners and take the opportunities when they came in her WISSOTA legal Street Stock .
It was a long and tough night for many. There were a lot of torn up race cars that will need fixing at a big cost and even those that survived the carnage will need many hours to clean the mud off them. Track officials now have to put the race track back together in less than twenty four hours for the Lucas drivers who are a very critical crowd. I'm glad they didn't just cancel the race because I would have then been disappointed, but it was a struggle, no doubt for many.
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