On Friday and Saturday, October 18th and 19th, the tenth annual "Topless Nationals" was held at Wagamon's Ogilvie Raceway near Ogilvie Minnesota. While sitting in rural countryside just East of the small town of Ogilvie, the track is in close proximity to both the Twin Cities metro area and greater Central Minnesota and also North Eastern Minnesota which makes it a perfect location to draw race cars from a far and wide area.
This would be the last race in 2019 in the state of Minnesota and with nice weather for the weekend after a couple of pretty nasty weekends in a row, lots of racers were anxious to get one last race under their belts along with race fans hoping for one more weekend of entertainment before it's time to get out the snow blowers and shovels and put on the snow tires and dig out the "long handles."
Actually, the weather for some of the racers has already put those plans behind schedule as several of the racers on hand for this weekend report that they have already seen measurable snow and that there was still some in the ditch lines as they headed out to race this weekend.
The "Topless Nationals" was started on a whim by the Wagamon family, looking for one more fun race weekend to wrap up their season and it was started following their second year of owning the "Big O." After a couple of years of being just a rather small wrap up to the season for their local racers, the event started to take "wings" and before they knew it, it had become another in the line of big races put on at this track.
After battling with the weather last year when the race was run as a full show on a Friday to beat an incoming snow storm, the great weather this year allowed them to have two full nights of racing along with a lot of other special events as a part of the weekend, unencumbered by nasty weather.
And speaking of race cars, they had quite a few for this show which ended up challenging their all time highs for car count. The track ran five classes of racing, under broad basic rules that allowed cars from all three sanctioning bodies within towing distance to race under their own rules. The classes were the Modifieds, B Mods, Super Stocks, Street Stocks and Mod Fours.
Since this is a WISSOTA sanctioned track, the majority of the cars that were on hand were from that sanctioning body but there were cars from all parts of WISSOTA racing. A number of IMCA cars were also on hand to run in both the B Mods and Mods with just a few USRA cars on hand too. I was surprised that there weren't more USRA cars on hand when,particularly in the Modified class have a distinct advantage over cars from the other two bodies. Everyone runs their own rules except the tops must come off all the Mods and B Mods as well as the Super Stocks which is just a WISSOTA class. Thankfully, the IMCA Stock Cars were not allowed to run with the Street Stocks this year as that was just an unfair pairing. The Street Stocks had the option to remove the tops also for bonus bucks and most did while the WISSOTA Mod fours also removed their tops.
The FYE promoted Fall Nationals several weeks ago, also at Ogilvie, saw the Hornet feature rained out so that event was piggy backed on to the Saturday night show so six feature races on Saturday would complete the two day program.
As stated earlier, the car count was substantial. Twenty seven Streets, nine Mod Fours, sixty eight B Mods, thirty two Super Stocks and forty one Modifieds made up the field on Friday night. Three more cars were added to the field on Saturday, trying from the back of a B Feature plus the eight Hornets that returned for their program and the grand total for the weekend was one hundred and eighty eight cars that raced the oval.
What was most impressive was the wide area that drivers towed in from. Seven states and three Canadian Provinces were represented in the field with drivers from Minnesota, Wisconsin, North and South Dakota, Michigan, Iowa and Montana along with Provinces of Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. That gives you and idea of how big this race has become but certainly the beautiful weather helped much to pull in long distance travelers.
This race is also run as a fund raiser for Breast Cancer and Cancer awareness and along that theme, anything that can be colored pink, is. The retaining wall all the way around the track is bright pink, the corner tires are all pink, the employees are wearing pink and many of the race cars feature pink numbers along with a lot of other things.
The kids Trick or Treat in the pits before the races on Friday night in costume and most of the racers have candy and treats for them as they wander the pits. Many of the cars are decorated for the occasion with the removed tops exposing lots of lights hanging on roll cages and a variety of other decorations unique to this event. My favorite was Shane Howell's car. Known as the "Cowboy", Howell had a huge cowboy hat made out of tin that he had attached to the top of his exposed roll cage and if that didn't look goofy, I don't know what did. A number of the cars had skeletons riding along with them, or perhaps it was just old crew chiefs that they forgot to feed. Either way, there were a number of two person teams entered.
A highlight also of the final night of racing is a parade of cars with everyone on hand forming a five wide salute to the fans and motoring around the track with lights ablazing and fireworks filling the sky, until they peel off , row by row back to the pits with the first feature race then taking place.
The Friday night program was heat races only, with a double heat race format. All drivers ran two heat races, with inverted lineups for the second go round from the first. Passing points were used and the first night totals would see the top sixteen drivers in points automatically making the main straight up from the points totals with the rest of the field set for B Features(no rung ladder) to make the mains.
The Friday night show was a mind boggling thirty eight heat races with the big field of cars and they started shortly after 7 pm and racing nearly non stop, wrapped up the show just after Midnight.
Four drivers were able to win both their heat races with Jody Bellefeuille doing so in the Modifieds, both Dave Cain and Shane Sabraski did so in the B Mods and Tim Johnson did so in the Super Stocks.
Both Cain and Sabraski do not race B Mods on a regular basis with Cain in the Tony Bahr ride that Cain put together and Sabraski driving for Randy Laage. Later there would be some complaining about Modified drivers "horning in" on the B Mods, but since all the cars race under the same set of wheels, if those drivers are able to dominate then it must have something to do with their driving ability, not that they have special privileges. However, the double heat winners would certainly be favorites based on their performance and their starting positions for Saturday night's finales.
On Saturday night, B Features for the B Mods, Supers and Modifieds set the twenty four car fields for the six main events.
The Hornet feature was up first and with only eight of the qualified cars returning, it was a quick non stop twelve lap main event that was won by Grayson Pratt in his Ford over Nate Servaty and 2019 WISSOTA national point champion Jake Smith.
Pole sitter Zach Elward won the Street Stock feature but it was not quite as straightforward as it might appear. In the early going, Elward was battling wheel to wheel with Todd Carter for the lead with Carter driving past Elward and taking over the top spot. Carter then led a few laps until Elward motored back up to challenge him. Just as the battle started to heat up again, Carter broke and was out of the contest.
The battle was then for second with Gavin Rowland and Cory Dykhoff fighting for the spot. The battle got so intense that they got together with Rowland flying into the infield. Apparently track officials couldn't decided who was at fault so both got their spots back, in an odd way of deciding the issue by not making a decision.
Elward would continue to lead but the driver on the move was former national champion Justin Vogel who came all the way from thirteenth to second as he found a fast lane up top. He moved in to challenge for the lead but ran out of time as Elward hung on to win his second big race in a row at Ogilvie. Ryan Satter also made a late charge to get third.
The Mod Four field was diminished for this late year special and Dean Larson got the win. He had a heavy battle going on with Bob Holtquist for the top spot. So heavy, in fact, that the leaders rubbed on the front chute with Holtquist going for a spin.
This time there was a call and it went in Larson's favor as he retained the lead and Holtquist decided to call it a year as he pulled to the pits. After that, Larson won easily over Forrest Foster and Justin Pogones. Larson is known for scaling the front stretch catch fence when he wins main events but the Ogilvie fence was just a bit much for the sixty something driver and he settled for a perch at half mast for his victory wave.
The most dominating performance of the night was reserved for another former national champion in Tim Johnson. Johnson has been running a limited schedule this year after recording astronomical feature win totals and races entered for the last few years but he had his Super Stock in top notch form on Saturday. He pulled away from the field and when his biggest challenger, Dave Mass, dropped out when he dumped fluid all over the track, Johnson's biggest challenge was all the lapped traffic.
With only a first lap yellow to slow the pace and with most cars running the distance, there was much lapped traffic but Johnson handled it beautifully as there were eleven cars running a lap down at the end and only eight on the lead lap as Johnson set a blistering pace and maintained it for thirty laps. Dan Nissalke finished a distant second with Dexton Koch third.
The concluding two open wheel races had a duce of a time keeping the action under the green as a combined seventeen yellows waved between the two feature races. However, when the cars were in motion there was plenty of good racing action going on.
In the B Mods, the three car battle was between Sabraski, Cain and Joey Jensen who was driving his brother's car this weekend. Sabraski continued to maintain the lead but on each of the restarts, either Cain or Jensen would challenge him severely but neither were able to make a pass.
This continued right down to the end of the race, with Sabraski dominating the three lap shootout to the finish and taking the win. Cain picked up his pace at the end and was able to secure second ahead of Jensen as the three seasoned Modified veterans finished in that order.
The MidMods saw qualifier Tom Silver scratch out of the main after a post race accident on Friday night left him with a concussion and unable to drive so Kyle Matuska was elevated to a guaranteed starting spot.
Sabraski was the only one of the six feature winners that did not begin his event while starting on the pole and while that sounds bad, the racing was truly much better than that statistic would indicate. Jody Bellefeuille was the early leader of the Modified race and it took several laps for Sabraski to work his way up from his fifth starting spot. But once he got rolling, ,he was able to work the high and low side of the track as needed and was simply able to drive deeper into the corners than his competition and still maintain control. Slowly but surely, he pulled away from the field until he had a comfortable lead as the last ten laps ran off, the longest green flag stretch of the entire race.
It was a fitting way for Sabraski to wrap up the year with his twenty fourth feature win and first ever national title in the Modifieds after previously having won both Super Stock and Midwest Mod titles. Dave Cain picked up his second runner up finish of the night while Andy Jones drove a great race to finish third in his first time behind the wheel of the Adam Ayotte car.
Regular track announcer "RJ at the Speedway" was absent this weekend as he was out ill. Fortunately, a more than qualified replacement was found roaming the grounds as USMTS announcer and FYE Motorsports head Chris Stepan stepped in and carried the torch just fine.
With the nice weather, a very good crowd was on hand for the final event of the year at Ogilvie. There were many campers on hand for this weekend, albeit that many were using the same units that they will use for ice fishing in a few short weeks when the temperatures drop a few more degrees. I would assume that Ogilvie has a very early April opener planned for 2020 as they like to be one of the first tracks in the area to open if at all possible. Thanks to the Wagamon family and promoter Nate Fischer for their help this weekend and throughout the 2019 racing season during my visits.
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