It has been too long since I was last in the pits and at the race track; smelling the smells and hearing the sounds of dirt track racing. Considerations kept me away from Florida this year, so February was a long and tedious month, as it is for most people unless you're a fan of snow and cold. Neither do much for me.
But that is all over now as dirt track racing has returned to the Midwest; albeit still a ten hour drive from my front porch. Thursday night, March 1, was opening night for the fourth annual B Mod Nationals presented by Troy Giralamo's G-Style Transport located in Williston North Dakota. Along with opening night qualifying for the B Mods, a full show of NASCAR sanctioned Modifieds was also on the card.
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One hundred and twenty B Mods were on the lineup for night one of racing although there were three pre entered cars that I did not see in the pits nor on the track and one I know for sure that was racing in Las Vegas instead. Therefore, my count was one hundred and seventeen B Mods along with forty one Modifieds.
The B Mods run under an umbrella of rules where each sanctioning body represented runs their own rules package with no mixing and matching. USRA Sport Mods, WISSOTA Midwest Mods, and both IMCA Northern and Southern Sport Mods are on hand this weekend and everyone is running their own rules including tires and spoiler height. It makes for an interesting combination and so far, in the four years that this race has been run, no determinable overwhelming advantage has been seen for any of the particular sanctioning bodies. And if there were, you can bet that there would be some hard "lobbying" to see some changes and so far, none have been necessary.
Each B Mod driver draws four pills upon entering the gate, which is their line up position for the four heat races that they run over two nights; two on Thursday and two more on Friday night. Total passing points for the four heats will determine the top twelve who automatically move into the main event, paying $8,500 to win on Saturday night and set the "ladder" for the rest as they try to qualify for the main with "alphabet soup" races on Saturday.
As you might expect, there was plenty of pent up Adrenalin as the racing program began, and a couple of the early heat races saw some wild driving and a rash of yellow flags. However, once everyone settled down, things went much smoother. This also seemed to coincide with the track widening out also. It was a little narrow in the groove early but as soon as a few drivers moved up the track, the outside cleaned off and then things opened up as drivers were running all over the track and both the racing action picked up and the number of yellows went down.
Once the first green flag flew, and actually it did wave two minutes ahead of the scheduled start time, there was absolutely no track prep work done. The track was smooth from the "get go" and stayed that way all night and as mentioned earlier, once they "blew off" the outside groove, the track remained racy all night. And we're talking a total of thirty three races here. Modified drivers reported that it did start to take some rubber in their feature race but a lot of racing had happened before that so the track prep crew deserves big congratulations. They did get some rain late on Wednesday and they let that precipitation soak in so that also may have helped.
Things did get off to a bit of a rocky start in the first hot lap session when a pile up in the third turn on the first lap of the first session of practice wrecked the cars of North Dakota's Tim Thomas and Missouri's Chris Hawkins to the point that they were done for the weekend.
Somewhat surprisingly, with so many strong drivers on hand, there were three drivers that managed to win both their heat races. They included Cody Jolly, Kale Westover and Dustin Daniels. For my money, Westover in his Southern Sport Mod looks like the driver to beat on Saturday night.
Young Austin Ellis from Wisconsin also won two heats but he was DQ'd from his first heat race win for an unknown(at this time), violation. Tony Bahr, another Wisconsin driver, won a heat race and finished second in another but his runner up place was also nixed due to a DQ. Justin Comer as also the recipient of a black flag when he refused to leave the racing surface after he pitted and returned with a new tire, something also against the rules.
The tech shed was a busy place as a Modified heat winner Jerad Fuller and runner up Dev Malmlov were also both DQ'd. Fuller did not return the rest of the night.
With consistency being important, solid finishes in all four of the B Mod heats would likely send that driver on to the feature race on Saturday. With that being said, many of the top runners ran into troubles in one of their heats that will cause them to scramble the rest of the weekend. Some of those included Josh Cain, Jared Timmerman, Shawn Strong, Curt Drake, J.C. Morton, Steve Muilenburg, Kanyan Methvin, Kris Jackson and John Allen who all had one bad heat race finish while Ryan Gillmore never even saw the track with his car. So you can expect that there will be some very hard driving on Friday night as drivers try to make up for that one bad outing.
The Modifieds ran a full program on Thursday night, as they will do all three nights this week. Although the Mods were sanctioned by NASCAR, the drivers were, just as the B Mod drivers were, running under their own rules package. Both Hoosier and American Racer tires were seen on cars and both USRA, WISSOTA and IMCA cars were on hand. One change, however, saw the IMCA cars running big spoilers on their crate motors and one of these cars nearly won the show as Mike Hansen, running a crate, led most of the Modified feature race before slipping back into the pack.
Five heats and two B features, run with passing points, set the twenty car field for the main event and Hansen took the lead with pressure from Jesse Willard and Paden Phillips. Charging to the front were Tanner Mullins, Terry Schultz and Dan Ebert. A couple of minor yellows kept the field bunched but the big break came following a lap thirteen yellow for a spin.
Mullins, who had been challenging Hansen hard, slipped up the track and Schultz got by him and then, in turn three on the same lap, Hansen pushed up the track and Schultz drove into the lead. From there he pulled away and won the feature with a comfortable edge.
Although driving a "plain Jane" car as usual, one would not have known that the flat tin housed a new MB chassis for Schultz. Mullins finished a strong third while Ebert, who runs both WISSOTA and open shows, was using his WISSOTA spec engine package on Thursday. Despite giving up horsepower, Ebert was clearly one of the fastest cars on the track. A strong fourth was Tyler Davis who was running his NCRA package(giving us our fourth sanctioning body) and it appears that Mitch Keeter has lost none of the magic he displayed at Humboldt last year as he charged from twelfth to fifth and had the low groove covered but simply ran out of laps.
One of the surprises in the Modifieds was the considerable number of crate motored cars that were competing and the other saw Tony Jackson Jr, the Late Model driver of renown, behind the wheel of a new MB Modified this week. I was not aware that Jackson Jr had ever driven a Mod before but he had all the standard sponsors of his Late Model on the car including Raymond Merrill's businesses so he must plan on doing some open wheel driving.
Track officials ran off a very tight and fast moving program on Thursday. Racing started just at the advertised time and the final checkered waved just at Midnight. While that might sound late, the racing was nearly nonstop as there were lots of races to be run. And it was a cold night. I jumped into my car and it said that the temperature was thirty degrees. However, my feet told me that the temp must be considerably colder than that! It is supposed to moderate as the weekend approaches.
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