The final checkered flag of the 2016 racing season in the state of Minnesota flew on Saturday night, October 22nd with the concluding round of the Topless Nationals at the Wagamon's Ogilvie Raceway.
Nearly all the race cars returned for Saturday night's second session of racing after preliminary qualifying took place on Friday night. Substituting for the Hornets, who ran a full show on Friday night were the UMSS Traditional Sprints, or in other other words, wingless Sprints running either a 602 or 604 crate motor or restricted motors of about the same relative power and cost of the MidMods or B Mods. However, I have been told that a 525 crate motor option with restrictions may be in the rules for next year, and in fact, I already know of one team that has already purchased a 525 crate for next year. At $14,000 a pop, where's the economy in that?
Multiple B features were needed for the MidMods and Mods with the other classes starting all cars in the main events. For the first time that I'm aware of, the Traditional Sprints race group time trials as they hot lapped before their individual heat races. Officials then inverted five for each heat with the cars staying right on the track and racing without a break as the officials called down to the drivers their starting spots. Normally I believe they draw for starting positions for their heats. I'm not sure if this is a proposed change for 2017 or not, but I do know that some of the tracks they race at don't have the technology to do this as it was done Saturday night.
One advantage of the cars racing topless was that it gave a couple of the drivers a chance to string some lights on their roll cages in celebration of the season. Both Matt Dickey and Justin Oestreich had colorful Halloween themed lights on their open wheel cars. Oestreich has done this every year since the Topless race started.
A couple of interesting notes from the pits Saturday included the return to racing of "Dyno" Don Swearingen to the racing ranks. Dyno raced for years in the Late Models and did quite a bit of traveling in his day including going to Robert Smawley's race at Kingsport Tennessee in the old NDRA days. I remember him being there because so was I!
In recent years Dyno's son David has raced a MidMod and his daughter Krysta a Pure Stock but they adorned David's car with Don's old number #07 and he raced the MidMod this weekend.
The two car team of John and Josh Kallas pulled all the way from Hurley Wisconsin for this weekend. If that doesn't seem too far, check your map and you'll see that Hurley is just across the border from the U.P. of Michigan! By the way, Hurley was(and is) well known as one of the most wide open towns in the Midwest, if you know what I mean!
If fact, their trip was so far that they arrived too late for Josh to run his heat race on Friday and he just tagged the field for the feature on Saturday. Josh is a first year driver in the Pure Stocks and looking for track time so he just took the roof off his Pure Stock and he ran with the Streets! John tells me that his Jet MidMod is for sale and he is looking to buy a different car for next year. John got a lead on this current car from his friends the Sorensons from North Dakota and Montana after they met while pitting side by side one year at the WISSOTA 100 in Huron.
Also making his racing return after a number of years was Bob Smith. Smith had a highly successful career racing both open wheel and fendered cars but gave it up a few years ago to help his daughter start her racing career in a Hornet. However, just recently he purchased a Street Stock out of North Dakota and they allowed him to tag the field Saturday, after not having been on hand Friday as he just got the car finished up. It would appear that he will be returning to racing on a regular basis next year.
In all honesty, the feature races on Saturday weren't near as good as they were two weeks earlier during the Fall Classic. There were way too many yellows that kept breaking up the flow of the races and the track didn't hold up near as well as it did two weeks ago, even though there were at least a hundred less cars racing on it.
Three drivers continued late season hot streaks. Ryan Satter, Jeremy Nelson and Dave Mass all won either a feature race last weekend at Granite City's National Championship Weekend or features at the Fall Classic, one week earlier.
Satter dominated the Street Stock feature and also had his best year yet, finishing third in WISSOTA national points. Satter, who comes from the wide spot in the road also known as Dent Minnesota, made a bold three wide move on the opening lap of the feature and gained the lead. Despite six yellows that brought the field back to him, on each restart he was dominant was was not challenged to the finish. Justin Vogel, who won here two weeks ago, finished second.
The Midwest Mod feature went to soon to be crowned national champion Jeremy Nelson. Switching back to his GRT chassis this weekend which he seems to rotate on a weekly basis with his MB, Nelson caught a high flying Eric Lamm to get the lead and then take the win. Lamm has been extremely strong in recent weeks also, taking a win last Sunday in Granite City. He jumped out to a big lead running the cushion but when the track started to take rubber, Nelson caught him quickly and Lamm was one lap too late getting to the rubber. "The Cobra", Cody Lee, had his second strong run of the post season here, finishing third.
They farmed the track at this point and the Traditional Sprints then put a real good show in their main event. Johnny Parsons III(of the famed Parsons family) led from the start running the low side. James Giassi was working the high side and gradually gained on Parsons, finally catching him with just a couple laps to go and executing a classic high side pass for the win. There were fifteen Traditional Sprints on hand for the show.
Mass killed the field in the Super Stocks, getting to the front early and holding on through seven yellows for the win. Mass has been extremely dominant at the end of this year, winning several special events along the way. Dexton Koch and Dustin Nelson trailed Mass.
The Modified feature brought with it a ting of controversy. Dave Cain and Josh Angst redrew the front row and the race was a two car battle from start to finish. Cain got the early lead but Angst was all over him, looking high and low for an opening. Angst did appear to be faster but the crafty Cain used the groove well and kept Josh behind him.
Then, after two and a half races, the track again started to take rubber, and all the drivers dove to the low side. The track became a high speed, one groove affair with Angst continuing to pressure Cain. The leaders started to hit lapped traffic which became a problem for both of them as they tried timing it right so they didn't try to pass the slower cars in the corner and get moved out of the rubber groove.
Angst played it perfect with only six laps to go as he pinned Cain on the low side of the track exiting turn two and tried to drive around him. Cain was blocked by the slower car and Angst was ready to pass him so Cain did the only thing he could do and that was to "dump" the slower car, spinning him out of the way so that Cain could maintain the lead. This triggered the yellow for the spinner and then it became a waiting game to see how track officials would call it.
I know that there are some promoters and sanctioning bodies that always announce that the leader must pass the slower cars, not drive through them. Other tracks and promoters fell that the leader has the right to move slower cars out of the way if need be. On this night and at this track, the decision was made to restore Cain to the lead and send the slower car to the back of the pack. Some in the crowd agreed, and some did not but that was the decision they made.
Cain controlled the final six laps and made sure that he didn't give Angst any openings as he drove on for the win. Jeremy Nelson had a nice night as he moved up for third at the finish. Some of the drivers hand signaled the starter to go single file on the last restart because of the narrow groove, but they went double file and there was plenty of banging as everyone fought to get to the rubber. Nelson was a big gainer because of this while Justin Oestreich came out a loser on the deal.
Thus the 2016 racing season in the Upper Midwest came to a close. Even with cool temperatures, the crowd was very good on Saturday night and after some shaky early years, it seems that this late season wrap up race has developed some solid "legs" and will be a yearly staple on the "Big O's" schedule.
Monday, October 24, 2016
Saturday, October 22, 2016
The "Big O" Topless to Wrap Up 2016
The last dirt track races of the 2016 racing season in the state of Minnesota commenced on Friday, October 21st with opening night of the seventh annual Topless Nationals at the Ogilvie Raceway.
This race, which was not highly supported in its first couple of years, has seemed to gain traction in recent years as it appears that many drivers like the novelty of racing topless once a year and the last race of the year is the perfect time to do such a promotion, since many racers at getting ready to tear their cars apart at this point of the season anyway. And it seems that more and more, there is a core of racers that just can't get enough racing in, and are willing to race just as long as tracks will offer them events. All classes except the Hornets ran without tops with it being optional for the Street Stocks but just about all of them removed their roofs too.
In the last couple of years this race has started attracting a real cosmopolitan field of drivers, representing three sanctioning bodies and several states. And there has not been a shortage of drivers willing to race either. Friday night, one hundred and sixty three drivers signed in to race, representing five states and three Canadian provinces. This alone is an impressive figure with the furthest tow likely being Kody Scholpp who pulled all the way from Lampman SK. There were also a number of drivers from both Dakotas as well as the Winnipeg area along with one lone entrant from Iowa.
The classes racing on Friday included Modifieds, Midwest Modifieds, Super Stocks, Street Stocks and Hornets. The Hornets ran a complete show on Friday with the other classes running heats only. They will have their B's and features on Saturday night and the UMSS Traditional Sprints will also join the show for a complete program too.
While most drivers represented the host WISSOTA sanctioning body, there were also IMCA and USRA cars on hand too. Everybody ran under their own rules package including tires and I didn't notice any huge disparity between the cars in the various groups.
There was one IMCA Stock Car that ran with the Street Stocks and I thought that he would dominate but Dan Mackenthun didn't show the speed that I would have expected from him. Perhaps they had him "choked down" after Andy Altenberg came in and blew away the Street Stocks, as he should have, a couple of years ago. I will have to check on this. A couple of IMCA Hobby Stocks also ran with the Street Stocks too.
One of the new drivers I chatted with was Brent Thompson from Minot North Dakota who was on hand with his Sport Mod. Brent works in the oil patch in North Dakota and moved West after originally living in southern Minnesota. In fact, he will be moving back to the Twin Cities suburbs soon and will likely race some Minnesota IMCA tracks as his job is two weeks on and two weeks off. His father runs Dakota Trackside, the prominent parts dealer in North Dakota. Brent was just hoping to be competitive in Ogilvie and in fact, ran a good third in his heat. However, with passing points setting the fields in all classes, it was hard to determine whether or not he had made the main.
Jeff Massingill was on hand with a new Modified ride for himself. Jeff, who prefers the Late Models and wished they were running them this weekend like last year, was driving a Rocket from Ruhlmann chassis that his Modified car owner Johnny Carpenter had just picked up. Massingill admits that he does not like the Modifieds with the vast majority of his racing experience being in fendered cars. Jeff had a couple of days off this week as he runs a school bus service for a couple of school districts in northern Minnesota and with MEA this week, there was no school, thus no work for him. Jeff tipped that he will be turning wrenches for J.R. Haley for the indoor event in St. Louis as Haley will be bringing Ricky Thornton Jr. to that event as his driver.
Another driver I talked to was a third generation racer from the renowned engine building family from St. Paul Minnesota, the Kelley family. Matt is the son of Mike Jr. and Mike Sr. was the originator of Kelley Racing Engines in St.Paul, a builder of racing engines since the 1960's. Matt is a young driver just getting his feet wet in the sport and is driving an older MidMod that his father Mike Jr used to race. Later, Matt's uncle Shaun would also show up with his car to race in the MidMods also.
It was a rough night for recently crowned WISSOTA national Street Stock Champion Tim Johnson from Brainerd. He was battling in a heat race for position when contact occurred with another car and in what I thought was a questionable call at best, Johnson was sent to the rear. In his haste to get back to the front of the field, he got sideways and caused another spin and with the two spin rule, the new national champion was sent to the pits, where he will have to charge from the tail Saturday night.
Things didn't get better for Johnson in the other two classes he races in either. A big winner in both Modifieds and Super Stocks as well as his Streeter, he was leading qualifying races in both classes when he got caught and passed by Joey Jensen and Dave Mass respectively, something that very rarely happens to Johnson. I guarantee that he'll really be driving harder than normal on Saturday to make up for what happened in his heats.
The "Big O" was decorated up for this event, as they are hosted a Breast Cancer fund raising event this weekend. The walls all the way around the track are a freshly painted pink as well as all the corner tires. Even the rules on the event flyer are printed in pink!
A total of eighteen qualifying races were held on Friday night. With passing points being used in all divisions, some of those who particularly prospered were Sketter Estey who came from ninth to win a MidMod heat, Mass who came from sixth to win a Super Stock heat, Jensen who came from ninth to win a Modified heat, and both Dave Cain and Josh Angst who came from sixth to win other Modified heats. Newly crowned Midwest Modified national champion Jeremy Nelson won heats in both the MidMods and Mods, driving his MB in the Mods and this week substituting his MB MidMod for a his GRT chassis.
The Hornets wrapped up the night with their feature event of the weekend and the nonstop twenty lap headliner went to Jason Reinke. Reinke set a torrid pace and he lapped all but four other competitors in the seventeen car field.
This race, which was not highly supported in its first couple of years, has seemed to gain traction in recent years as it appears that many drivers like the novelty of racing topless once a year and the last race of the year is the perfect time to do such a promotion, since many racers at getting ready to tear their cars apart at this point of the season anyway. And it seems that more and more, there is a core of racers that just can't get enough racing in, and are willing to race just as long as tracks will offer them events. All classes except the Hornets ran without tops with it being optional for the Street Stocks but just about all of them removed their roofs too.
In the last couple of years this race has started attracting a real cosmopolitan field of drivers, representing three sanctioning bodies and several states. And there has not been a shortage of drivers willing to race either. Friday night, one hundred and sixty three drivers signed in to race, representing five states and three Canadian provinces. This alone is an impressive figure with the furthest tow likely being Kody Scholpp who pulled all the way from Lampman SK. There were also a number of drivers from both Dakotas as well as the Winnipeg area along with one lone entrant from Iowa.
The classes racing on Friday included Modifieds, Midwest Modifieds, Super Stocks, Street Stocks and Hornets. The Hornets ran a complete show on Friday with the other classes running heats only. They will have their B's and features on Saturday night and the UMSS Traditional Sprints will also join the show for a complete program too.
While most drivers represented the host WISSOTA sanctioning body, there were also IMCA and USRA cars on hand too. Everybody ran under their own rules package including tires and I didn't notice any huge disparity between the cars in the various groups.
There was one IMCA Stock Car that ran with the Street Stocks and I thought that he would dominate but Dan Mackenthun didn't show the speed that I would have expected from him. Perhaps they had him "choked down" after Andy Altenberg came in and blew away the Street Stocks, as he should have, a couple of years ago. I will have to check on this. A couple of IMCA Hobby Stocks also ran with the Street Stocks too.
One of the new drivers I chatted with was Brent Thompson from Minot North Dakota who was on hand with his Sport Mod. Brent works in the oil patch in North Dakota and moved West after originally living in southern Minnesota. In fact, he will be moving back to the Twin Cities suburbs soon and will likely race some Minnesota IMCA tracks as his job is two weeks on and two weeks off. His father runs Dakota Trackside, the prominent parts dealer in North Dakota. Brent was just hoping to be competitive in Ogilvie and in fact, ran a good third in his heat. However, with passing points setting the fields in all classes, it was hard to determine whether or not he had made the main.
Jeff Massingill was on hand with a new Modified ride for himself. Jeff, who prefers the Late Models and wished they were running them this weekend like last year, was driving a Rocket from Ruhlmann chassis that his Modified car owner Johnny Carpenter had just picked up. Massingill admits that he does not like the Modifieds with the vast majority of his racing experience being in fendered cars. Jeff had a couple of days off this week as he runs a school bus service for a couple of school districts in northern Minnesota and with MEA this week, there was no school, thus no work for him. Jeff tipped that he will be turning wrenches for J.R. Haley for the indoor event in St. Louis as Haley will be bringing Ricky Thornton Jr. to that event as his driver.
Another driver I talked to was a third generation racer from the renowned engine building family from St. Paul Minnesota, the Kelley family. Matt is the son of Mike Jr. and Mike Sr. was the originator of Kelley Racing Engines in St.Paul, a builder of racing engines since the 1960's. Matt is a young driver just getting his feet wet in the sport and is driving an older MidMod that his father Mike Jr used to race. Later, Matt's uncle Shaun would also show up with his car to race in the MidMods also.
It was a rough night for recently crowned WISSOTA national Street Stock Champion Tim Johnson from Brainerd. He was battling in a heat race for position when contact occurred with another car and in what I thought was a questionable call at best, Johnson was sent to the rear. In his haste to get back to the front of the field, he got sideways and caused another spin and with the two spin rule, the new national champion was sent to the pits, where he will have to charge from the tail Saturday night.
Things didn't get better for Johnson in the other two classes he races in either. A big winner in both Modifieds and Super Stocks as well as his Streeter, he was leading qualifying races in both classes when he got caught and passed by Joey Jensen and Dave Mass respectively, something that very rarely happens to Johnson. I guarantee that he'll really be driving harder than normal on Saturday to make up for what happened in his heats.
The "Big O" was decorated up for this event, as they are hosted a Breast Cancer fund raising event this weekend. The walls all the way around the track are a freshly painted pink as well as all the corner tires. Even the rules on the event flyer are printed in pink!
A total of eighteen qualifying races were held on Friday night. With passing points being used in all divisions, some of those who particularly prospered were Sketter Estey who came from ninth to win a MidMod heat, Mass who came from sixth to win a Super Stock heat, Jensen who came from ninth to win a Modified heat, and both Dave Cain and Josh Angst who came from sixth to win other Modified heats. Newly crowned Midwest Modified national champion Jeremy Nelson won heats in both the MidMods and Mods, driving his MB in the Mods and this week substituting his MB MidMod for a his GRT chassis.
The Hornets wrapped up the night with their feature event of the weekend and the nonstop twenty lap headliner went to Jason Reinke. Reinke set a torrid pace and he lapped all but four other competitors in the seventeen car field.
Monday, October 17, 2016
Big and Long Night of Racing at Spring Lake Speedway's Autumn Clash
One of the last dirt races in the state of Wisconsin was conducted on Friday night, October 14th at the Spring Lake Speedway near Unity Wisconsin with the running of part one of the second annual Autumn Clash. SLS was completing its first full year of racing in 2016, having started their new endeavor last October when new promoter Scott Duval opened up the track with the first annual Autumn Clash.
SLS ran their first full season this year and overall had a very positive first full season. The crowds were good and I think even better than Duval probably was expecting. He ran a limited schedule of about a dozen races(give or take due to rainouts), and told me that he plans to schedule a ten night schedule for 2017. He feels that an every week program is just a little too much for his staff to handle and more than the fans want to see. His hope is to make every night special with some kind of special promotion and the every week thing starts to wear out come the heat and humidity of July and August.
Car counts for his first year were OK with some classes running stronger in numbers than others. Most of the local racers had either retired or sold off their dirt equipment with the track's status being so uncertain the last few years and Unity is in kind of the transition zone between the dirt tracks of western Wisconsin and the tar tracks of central Wisconsin. However, there is still plenty of interest in dirt track racing in that part of the state and Duval is expecting more local racers to start to get back into the sport if SLS shows stability and proves that they will be running for the long haul.
Duval surprised just about everyone when after weighing the options of the different sanctioning bodies, he chose to become sanctioned by NASCAR. While there aren't many other tracks near or far away using NASCAR sanctioning, he appears to be happy with it as he plans to continue with their sanctioning next year. In reality, he used WISSOTA rules to govern his racing except for the Modified class which used amalgamated rules that allowed WISSOTA, IMCA and USRA cars to all compete together.
Probably the biggest problem Duval ran into during his opening year was in the racing surface itself which was quite unsettled for most of the year. Some bad clay that had to be removed from the track set him back and there were some nights when they tended to over water the track, according to the drivers I talked to. Duval agreed that issue was of major concern to him and as a driver himself, he understands that the track must be in race ready shape for the drivers. A major addition of more clay is in the works for the off season.
This track issue would rear its head again for the Autumn Clash as the racing conditions were among the roughest that I have seen at a track since the opening nights of 2016. The track had a lot of bumps and ruts and the number one-two corner was really soft. This, along with the unfamiliarity of many of the drivers with the track along with the "devil may care" attitude that many drivers exhibit while running some of the late season shows, resulting in a night of many crashes and wrecks and an inordinate number of cars that suffered some major damage.
One of the things about this program that had Duval most excited and I must say had me intrigued to was the mixing of classes from the eastern part of the state with the local cars and western Wisconsin cars running under different rules packages.
The Modifieds were running under their own rules package and this resulted in about half the field running under WISSOTA rules, about half under IMCA rules and a couple of USRA and even UMP rules cars on hand. Some of the IMCA cars kind of cheated the rules by adding spoilers while others chose just to rune like they normally do.
The Modified main saw local racers Jared Loos and Chris Oertel battle early until they got together and Loos was sent to the tail. Kevin Adams then took advantage of this to blow past Oertel on the high side and he then controlled the rest of the event. It was reported to me later that Adams was already testing out his Florida setup, running his "big" motor and no spoiler but I can't confirm that. Matt Gilbertson towed all the way from western Minnesota with his MB and finished a strong second ahead of Ryan Aho, driving Darrell Moe's car that promoter Duval himself drives when he's not busy promoting.
Most of the Super Stocks were running under WISSOTA rules with several of the eastern Wisconsin Grand National cars also racing. The Grand Nationals were to run their in their own class on Saturday but were allowed to run with the Super Stocks on Friday. I was told that the Grand Nationals might have a little more power but didn't handle near as well as the Supers, based on their rules. It turned out that the Supers dominated but they also out numbered the Grand Nationals by two to one along with having track experience.
Jeff Klopstein Jr led eighteen and a half laps until he made one mistake and was passed by ABC track champion, the "Flying Farmer" (how many of them are there anyway?), Nick Oreskovich, who went on for the win.
For Midwest Modifieds, it was again up to everyone to run their own rules. Midwest Modifieds, WISSOTA style, dominated but there were almost ten Sport Mods on hand along with a few B Mods from USRA.
Coming from the fourth row, Chippewa Fall's Michael Truscott was the winner. Truscott, who has a twenty grand to win victory this Fall among his special event wins, used the high side to fly past the competition for the win. Much of the remaining field was most focused on trying to become the first racer to put a hole in Duval's wall as they were creaming the concrete from nearly every angle possible. It was a devastating night on the equipment and one in which the wrecker drivers were hoping that they had filled their fuel tanks, they were making so many runs back and forth to the pits! Less than half the field was able to see the checkered.
What seemed as the most unfair pairing actually turned out to be one of the better features of the night. The IMCA style Stock Cars were making their first appearance at the track and were running a complete show on Friday, to then be replaced by the WISSOTA style Street Stocks on Saturday. While they both look similiar, the Stock Cars have a whole lot more horsepower than the Streets while having to weigh more and running the IMCA tire. Most people(including the Street Stock drivers who opted to give it a go), felt that they were running at a severe disadvantage and wouldn't be competitive.
With an excellent showing of Shawano based Stock Cars, there was a strong field of cars from both quarters for the race and while they didn't win, the Street Stocks showed that while they didn't have the power to pass the Stock Cars, they did have enough speed that they could maintain their positions and make it tough for the Stockers to get by.
Kyle Frederick, one of the better Stock Car drivers in the state, did win the race when he was able to use his power to make an outside pass on a restart. Paul Diefenthaler, who runs a Street Stock in eastern Wisconsin that uses very similar rules to the WISSOTA cars, finished second and Jay Kesan, driving a WISSOTA Street, finished third.
Those four feature races were the only ones completed as a bad wreck in the Pure Stock feature required transporting a driver to the hospital and without another ambulance on the premises, the time that it would have taken before the race could have been restarted was prohibitive and the event was called complete with the Pure Stock feature partly completed. The Hornets split their prize money equally. It was later reported that the Pure Stock driver was released from the hospital with no apparent injuries.
With well over a hundred and fifty cars on hand, there were many races to be run. And while they started pretty much on time, just running that many events took a considerable amount of time. Factor in all the grinding crashes that took time to clean up and things got quite late. The track must also accept part of the blame, as they were quite slow restarting races and there was a lot of unneeded laps taken between each event before things proceeded. The bottom line was that it was nearly one thirty am before they finally stuck a fork in the action.
However, I did find the racing entertaining and it was not a bad show by any means. There was a good crowd on hand and they seemed pretty accepting to the late night. When they got tired and had enough, they simply packed up and either headed home or down to the party which was already going strong long before the final checkered waved. After all, it IS Wisconsin and the beer must flow!
The second half of Duval's doubleheader was rained on on Saturday and for SLS, their first full year of racing is now complete.
SLS ran their first full season this year and overall had a very positive first full season. The crowds were good and I think even better than Duval probably was expecting. He ran a limited schedule of about a dozen races(give or take due to rainouts), and told me that he plans to schedule a ten night schedule for 2017. He feels that an every week program is just a little too much for his staff to handle and more than the fans want to see. His hope is to make every night special with some kind of special promotion and the every week thing starts to wear out come the heat and humidity of July and August.
Car counts for his first year were OK with some classes running stronger in numbers than others. Most of the local racers had either retired or sold off their dirt equipment with the track's status being so uncertain the last few years and Unity is in kind of the transition zone between the dirt tracks of western Wisconsin and the tar tracks of central Wisconsin. However, there is still plenty of interest in dirt track racing in that part of the state and Duval is expecting more local racers to start to get back into the sport if SLS shows stability and proves that they will be running for the long haul.
Duval surprised just about everyone when after weighing the options of the different sanctioning bodies, he chose to become sanctioned by NASCAR. While there aren't many other tracks near or far away using NASCAR sanctioning, he appears to be happy with it as he plans to continue with their sanctioning next year. In reality, he used WISSOTA rules to govern his racing except for the Modified class which used amalgamated rules that allowed WISSOTA, IMCA and USRA cars to all compete together.
Probably the biggest problem Duval ran into during his opening year was in the racing surface itself which was quite unsettled for most of the year. Some bad clay that had to be removed from the track set him back and there were some nights when they tended to over water the track, according to the drivers I talked to. Duval agreed that issue was of major concern to him and as a driver himself, he understands that the track must be in race ready shape for the drivers. A major addition of more clay is in the works for the off season.
This track issue would rear its head again for the Autumn Clash as the racing conditions were among the roughest that I have seen at a track since the opening nights of 2016. The track had a lot of bumps and ruts and the number one-two corner was really soft. This, along with the unfamiliarity of many of the drivers with the track along with the "devil may care" attitude that many drivers exhibit while running some of the late season shows, resulting in a night of many crashes and wrecks and an inordinate number of cars that suffered some major damage.
One of the things about this program that had Duval most excited and I must say had me intrigued to was the mixing of classes from the eastern part of the state with the local cars and western Wisconsin cars running under different rules packages.
The Modifieds were running under their own rules package and this resulted in about half the field running under WISSOTA rules, about half under IMCA rules and a couple of USRA and even UMP rules cars on hand. Some of the IMCA cars kind of cheated the rules by adding spoilers while others chose just to rune like they normally do.
The Modified main saw local racers Jared Loos and Chris Oertel battle early until they got together and Loos was sent to the tail. Kevin Adams then took advantage of this to blow past Oertel on the high side and he then controlled the rest of the event. It was reported to me later that Adams was already testing out his Florida setup, running his "big" motor and no spoiler but I can't confirm that. Matt Gilbertson towed all the way from western Minnesota with his MB and finished a strong second ahead of Ryan Aho, driving Darrell Moe's car that promoter Duval himself drives when he's not busy promoting.
Most of the Super Stocks were running under WISSOTA rules with several of the eastern Wisconsin Grand National cars also racing. The Grand Nationals were to run their in their own class on Saturday but were allowed to run with the Super Stocks on Friday. I was told that the Grand Nationals might have a little more power but didn't handle near as well as the Supers, based on their rules. It turned out that the Supers dominated but they also out numbered the Grand Nationals by two to one along with having track experience.
Jeff Klopstein Jr led eighteen and a half laps until he made one mistake and was passed by ABC track champion, the "Flying Farmer" (how many of them are there anyway?), Nick Oreskovich, who went on for the win.
For Midwest Modifieds, it was again up to everyone to run their own rules. Midwest Modifieds, WISSOTA style, dominated but there were almost ten Sport Mods on hand along with a few B Mods from USRA.
Coming from the fourth row, Chippewa Fall's Michael Truscott was the winner. Truscott, who has a twenty grand to win victory this Fall among his special event wins, used the high side to fly past the competition for the win. Much of the remaining field was most focused on trying to become the first racer to put a hole in Duval's wall as they were creaming the concrete from nearly every angle possible. It was a devastating night on the equipment and one in which the wrecker drivers were hoping that they had filled their fuel tanks, they were making so many runs back and forth to the pits! Less than half the field was able to see the checkered.
What seemed as the most unfair pairing actually turned out to be one of the better features of the night. The IMCA style Stock Cars were making their first appearance at the track and were running a complete show on Friday, to then be replaced by the WISSOTA style Street Stocks on Saturday. While they both look similiar, the Stock Cars have a whole lot more horsepower than the Streets while having to weigh more and running the IMCA tire. Most people(including the Street Stock drivers who opted to give it a go), felt that they were running at a severe disadvantage and wouldn't be competitive.
With an excellent showing of Shawano based Stock Cars, there was a strong field of cars from both quarters for the race and while they didn't win, the Street Stocks showed that while they didn't have the power to pass the Stock Cars, they did have enough speed that they could maintain their positions and make it tough for the Stockers to get by.
Kyle Frederick, one of the better Stock Car drivers in the state, did win the race when he was able to use his power to make an outside pass on a restart. Paul Diefenthaler, who runs a Street Stock in eastern Wisconsin that uses very similar rules to the WISSOTA cars, finished second and Jay Kesan, driving a WISSOTA Street, finished third.
Those four feature races were the only ones completed as a bad wreck in the Pure Stock feature required transporting a driver to the hospital and without another ambulance on the premises, the time that it would have taken before the race could have been restarted was prohibitive and the event was called complete with the Pure Stock feature partly completed. The Hornets split their prize money equally. It was later reported that the Pure Stock driver was released from the hospital with no apparent injuries.
With well over a hundred and fifty cars on hand, there were many races to be run. And while they started pretty much on time, just running that many events took a considerable amount of time. Factor in all the grinding crashes that took time to clean up and things got quite late. The track must also accept part of the blame, as they were quite slow restarting races and there was a lot of unneeded laps taken between each event before things proceeded. The bottom line was that it was nearly one thirty am before they finally stuck a fork in the action.
However, I did find the racing entertaining and it was not a bad show by any means. There was a good crowd on hand and they seemed pretty accepting to the late night. When they got tired and had enough, they simply packed up and either headed home or down to the party which was already going strong long before the final checkered waved. After all, it IS Wisconsin and the beer must flow!
The second half of Duval's doubleheader was rained on on Saturday and for SLS, their first full year of racing is now complete.
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