Opening night racing action began on Thursday night, November 13th for the XIX Edition of the Turkey Bowl at Jerry Hoffman's Springfield Raceway near the airport in Springfield Missouri.
Begun on a whim as a way to wrap up the racing season and not really knowing whether such a late season event would be supported by both the drivers and the public, this race has turned into one of the largest late season gatherings of racers and fans in the Midwest. Huge fields of race cars in a multitude of classes and a packed house for the Saturday night finale have marked this event in recent years.
It has now grown to three full nights of racing with an additional night for loading the racing field into the pits and for practice. As the popularity of this race has grown, so also has the pit area to park the hundreds of racers. Over the years, Jerry has moved a considerable amount of of earth and now uses every single inch of his property to park race teams and in recent years has even expanded to the East behind where the pits used to end to use a hay field that butts right up to I-44. This event has turned into one of the largest races in the Ozarks and drivers now come from a number of states to race, both to get that one last race of the year in and also because the prize money has also increased by leaps in recent years for the drivers.
Thursday night's opening action featured racing in three classes plus the Legend Cars while drivers in all other classes also got the chance to hot lap, both before the racing and for a period of time after the night's racing was concluded.
Thursday night the Midwest Modz B class, the Pure Stocks or full bodied class as some were calling it plus the Front Wheel Drive cars. The first two classes ran heats only on Thursday with their B Features and main event coming on Friday night. The Front Wheel Drive cars, however, would run their full program on Thursday with the winner getting the first prized Turkey trophy to take home.
The pit area was already jam packed on Thursday with the Front Wheel Drive cars signing in forty two drivers, the Pure Stocks fifty eight and the MMB fifty four. Throw in about another fifty Legend cars and over two hundred drivers would be racing on Thursday with five more classes yet to run over the next two nights as Super Stocks have also been added to this year's show, their event being a one night stand on Saturday when the Late Models race. Surprisingly though, even though the Lates don't race until Saturday ,there were a goodly number of them already on hand two days early just to practice.
Passing points were used to set the running order for the main events heat races for all classes racing on Thursday with more practice mixed in between B Features for the Front Wheel Drive cars and then again after their main event.
Twenty three drivers would start the twenty three lap Front Wheel Drive feature racing for $1023 to the winner. Alex Boyden would start on the pole after earning the most passing points in the heats and he would then go on to lead the entire race and collect the big money.
Two yellow flags would slow the contest in the first two laps with a couple cars flying off the back chute followed by a debris yellow but after that, the racing would be clean and hard with just one more stoppage near the mid point of the race.
Boyden moved to a comfortable lead but the battle for second was a good one as Jason Weber and Jordan Goddard battled back and forth for that spot. Goddard held the spot early but by the halfway point, Weber had passed him for position.
The midrace yellow saw Weber challenge Boyden the most that any had all night, but after staying close for a couple laps, Boyden again pulled away.
The driver on the move was Amadeus Keepper who started twelfth and by the midpoint of the race still had not raced into the top five. But he used the higher lane on the track and once he got his momentum going, he was driving by other racers at a quick rate. Continuing his charge, he passed Weber for second in the late going but was not able to get any closer to the leader, but a yellow late could have been problematic for Boyden.
However, that didn't happen and Boyden drove home without a severe challenge to take the win. Behind Keepper and Weber, Tyrel Jones and Dylan Whitney completed the top five. Fifteen drivers completed the distance with all on the lead lap.
With the racing completed, practice then took over and the parade of drivers to get laps was still going strong when I called it a night, with all racing done around 9:30 pm. On Friday night, the MMB and Pure Stocks will run their B Features and main events while the Modifieds, B Mods and MMA hit the track for the first time, running their qualifying heats. It will be a big night night of open wheel racing as we span the alphabet in classes.
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