Despite all the hard racing of Friday night, all the Modifieds entered in the event would return except Ricky Thornton Jr following his post race issues from Friday night. A strong field of cars would also be on hand for the other three classes with over twenty new cars on hand that did not race on Friday night.
Racing proved to be just as dramatic through the various qualifying sessions as it had been on Friday night, with all four classes racing extremely hard to either make the big show or qualify well for the other three feature races to be presented. The only marked difference was that the track would look much more like a normal Marshalltown track in that it was much slicker and slower than it had been on Friday night. Of course, that is not necessarily a bad thing at all as the racing continued to be side by side but just not at the perhaps daring speeds that we had seen on Friday night.
Five heat races and a B Feature weeded the Modifieds down to the twenty four that would vie for the big bucks. Of note during one of the heat races was an exciting little tangle between Ken Schrader and Marcus Yarie that proved to be interesting. Schrader was pretty quiet during the show on Friday but his desire was as great as anyone's to make the main and when he felt that Yarie had cut him off just one too many times as they raced off corner four in that heat race, he responded by diving inside Yarie in turn three and running him right up into the dingle weeds at the top of the track until Yarie spun. Schrader then drove on to second in the heat and Yarie had to race a B Feature. Interestingly, Yarie would start the main directly behind Schrader but I observed no more issues between the two in that race and Schrader would advance all the way from twentieth to ninth at the finish.
The fifty lapper would put an explanation point on a great racing season for Jordan Grabouski as he led from start to finish to dominate the race and take the ten grand back to Nebraska with him. He had earned the pole position and took the early lead over Richie Gustin and Jeff Aikey. Aikey would apply the most pressure in the early going , several times nearly getting by Grabo coming off turn two. However, Grabouski was tempering his pace as he knew that fifty laps is a lot of laps and he was saving his car for the end of the race.
Tom Berry Jr was another challenger as he came up from the sixth row to battle for the lead and later in the race it was Joel Rust that applied the heavy pressure.
The race was red flagged at the twenty lap mark when Bone Larson took a wild ride off the third turn. He was transported for evaluation of a back issue to a local hospital which resulted in a delay for the ambulance. I guess this situation would highlight my only issue of any kind with Marshalltown and that is I would like to see either a wall or a rail around the track to keep the cars from flying off the high banks as speed like they occasionally do. Launching off these big corners at speed can be a very dangerous thing and my druthers would be to keep the cars on the track.
The restart saw Aikey have trouble and he dropped a full row on the green which would cause him to be snorting mad after the event due to what he felt was a very poor restart. However, Grabo continued to lead with Rust putting on very heavy pressure. There were several times when it looked like Rust would make the pass but each time Grabouski would hold on.
However, as the laps ran off, Grabo started to draw away as he apparently had saved something for the end and Rust was not able to maintain his pace toward the end of the event. Grabouski would take the win with Rust, Gustin, Cayden Carter and Aikey completing the top five.
Actually, Grabouski had a good shot at another double win except for some overly enthusiastic moves by another driver on a late restart in the Stock Car feature. Damon Murty had moved up from the third row to take the lead in the Stock Car feature and looked to be the class of the field until Grabouski started putting the pressure on him. The race looked like it might be a shootout at the end after the first yellow of the race flew with only four laps to go.
Grabouski chose the outside for the Deleware restart but on the green, the car inside him decided to move all the way up the track to the wall despite certainly knowing that the outside lane was already filled. Grabouski was shoved up into the wall and his c ar was damaged and he limped to the pits, done for the event.
Murty then drove away from the field for the win with Josh Mroczkowski, Elijah Zevenbergen, Jeremy Christians and Todd Reitzler following Murty home.
The Sport Mods saw Cody Thompson put on another powerful performance as he drove around Brandon Schmitt and Kyle Olson in the early going and then led the rest of the twenty lapper for the win. He was flying and pulled away for a comfortable win in a race that was stopped only twice for yellow flags. Kyle Olson and Schmitt stayed in those positions the rest of the race with Tony Olson and Austin Kaplan completing the top five.
A double win weekend was completed in the Hobby Stocks by Kaden Reynolds after he was able to get around Eric Stanton for the win. Stanton led the majority of laps in the race with Reynolds following closely behind and putting heavy pressure on as they raced on the top side of the high banking.
Reynolds was very close and with just a few laps left, Stanton slipped over the banking and gave Reynolds the lead which Kaden held on to for the rest of the event. Stanton would eventually drop out of the race and a strong running Jason Fusselman would come up from the fourth row to finish second. Miciah Hildebaugh would finish in front of Kansas driver Cody Williams for third. Austin Mehmen came back from a DQ in his heat race to race from twentieth to complete the top five.
Just as on Friday night, the show would roll along at a crisp pace with lots of racing and few yellow flags throughout the night. With the temperatures dropping by the minute, track officials didn't spend a lot of time with needless pomp and circumstance before throwing the green flag and kept the interviews short and to the point, thus keeping the show moving. The final checkered flag waved at just around 9:30 pm and marked the end of two nights of outstanding short track racing. It was as good a weekend of racing as any seen all Summer. Thanks to Toby Kruse and to Jerry Van Sickle for always entertaining us and to all the other track employees for a job well done.
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