The Grant Junghans Memorial Race was the highlight event of the night on Saturday, November 16th and the cap to a weekend of racing at Park City Kansas' 81 Speedway. Forty nine Modifieds were on hand to fight for a season high ten thousand and two dollar top prize and it was Minnesota driver Jacob Bleess who led all fifty laps to win the big prize. The B Mods also were in action and their main event, worth one thousand and two dollars went to Ethan Isaacs.
It was also a huge night for the management team at 81 Speedway as promoter C. Ray Hall and his staff shut the gates for the last time as the track has been sold and will be under new management starting next Spring. C. Ray took over management of the track from his parents and has been running the track continuously since 1971 along with starting and running the NCRA sanctioning body. The seventy seven year old Hall had an emotional day as earlier in the afternoon all the family members were on hand at the track for photo taking and they then followed that up by being involved in an emotion opening ceremony before the first green flag of the evening was waved by C. Ray.
He said that he will now focus more energy on his other promotions in Hutchinson Kansas along with Belleville and the NCRA series.
I made a point of seeking out USMTS head Todd Staley to find out what was in his plan for the 2020 racing season. He said while the schedule is not yet finalized, he expects to run somewhere between forty and forty five races next year. He also plans to have just one region and crown just one champion in 2020. He also won't require drivers to attend every race with their best thirty five or so races being counted toward the points title. he hopes to beef up the point fund for next year and also increase the travel allowance for those drivers in the top ten.
He rated the 2019 racing season as a good but not great one. He said that he felt the competition was among some of the best years he has had but the car counts were down this year also. He lost track of the number of rain outs suffered in 2019 but said it really hurt his early season plans and then they never fully recovered. He plans to open the 2020 season in Vado N.M. in early March but has not ruled out an earlier opening in either Arizona, California or even perhaps Florida.
He sees no significant rule changes on the horizon and is very excite about what the 2020 racing season will be at both his weekly tracks, Webster City and Mason City.
I also had the chance to speak with another high profile promoter briefly and that was Ryan Whitworth of the Humboldt Speedway. He said that the date for his B Mod race in March had been changed by one week due to the unusual calendar that falls in 2020. While it probably won't affect either event, it will be a problem for some race fans as the Spring races at Humboldt and Beatrice fall on the same weekend for 2020.
Ryan was a little coy about saying much more about his plans for the coming year. He did say that he was waiting to work with new 81 promoter John Allen and some things and hoping for some ways to get cars traveling back and forth from Humboldt to 81 and he wouldn't commit to which sanctioning body he would be working with in 2020 with much left to be decided before wheels turned next year.
Even with hit being their last race ever at 81, the unique method of selling concessions in the pits continued, with a golf cart making the rounds in the pits and selling items out of the back of the cart since there is no concession stand in the pits. I would think that the new management group would take a look at that situation as well as the one where pit passes are sold on the front chute and there is really no security keeping people from just entering the pits on a whim. I would guess they lose some revenue over the course of a racing year.
Along with the forty nine Modifieds on hand, there were also twenty two B Mods as ten different Mods and four B Mods showed for the first time on Saturday. These helped replace some that were wrecked on Friday night as Modified drivers Cory Crapser, Paden Phillips, Beau Davis, Cody Schniepp, Brian Franz, JD Choate and Dan Powers did not return after most were involved in the big feature wreck last night.
Additionally, Ryan Gustin drove for Chris Kratzer and Josh Lanterman for Bobby Bills on this night as those two cars were also damaged in that big pileup.
Keeping to the race schedule was not a big item this weekend as for the second straight night the program started considerably later than advertised with Saturday night's show almost an hour late in starting. However, due to only two classes racing, the program was done just a few minutes after 9 pm, making it the second straight night that the racing was done early and appreciated by the wind swept fans in attendance, of which there were many on Saturday night after the grandstands were quite empty on Friday night.
The program was nearly identical to Friday night's show with five heats, two B Features and the main in the Modifieds while the B Mods ran three heats and a feature. The only significant difference was that the Mods ran an extra ten laps tonight.
Early on, the track was quite similar to Friday night's with it being heavy and having a big cushion which is why extra packing was needed and delayed the start of the show. However, the track was starting to widen out and take shape just like it did on Friday night when it provided some great side by side racing in the mains and most particularly, in the Modified main.
However, after the heat races, they did the unthinkable thing and forgive me if I'm not maintaining our positive attitude here, but the appearance of the grader wrecked the rest of the show with out a doubt. Whoever was operating that machine totally ruined the track for the rest of the show and a wide, rapidly developing racy surface became a one lane track right on the bottom with outside passing nearly impossible. Seldom if ever have I seen the character of a track changed so rapidly and unfortunately, not for the better.
The Modifieds had two follow the leader, hug the bottom events before the features came out with the B Mods first on the agenda. Mike Striegel had the pole and it seemed that he would run away with the show but he was having to pinch his car so hard in the corners that he killed his momentum and got passed by Ethan Isaacs. Isaacs then ran away from the pack with the only driver able to make any significant being Dustin Daniels.
Daniels found a way to pass in the middle lane of the track and he drove by car after car, coming from fourteenth to get to second. It looked like he might have something for Isaacs but Ethan picked up the pace and pulled away for the impressive win. Isaacs was one driver that was not on hand on Friday so he made his one day trip very worthwhile.
Twenty four cars would start the Modified main that with extra bonus money would pay twelve hundred bucks just to take the green flag. The redraw would prove to be even more important than normal with Bleess drawing the pole and then leading all the way. Brandon Sheppard drew the outside pole and he stayed there for fifty laps, sometimes closing in on Bleess some but never in a position to really challenge for the lead. In fact, after the first couple of laps there was no change among at least the ten ten cars in the running order. Even the lapped cars were strung out such that they never really caused Bleess any consternation.
There was only one yellow in the fifty laps and that was for a lapped car, running dead last that still felt it was important for him to stop on the track for his flat tire so that he could go change it , return to the tail of the pack and stay right there. A wise choice by the race director saw the restart done single file as a double file restart on such a one lane track would have been grossly unfair.
Bleess pulled away again over the last six laps and drove to an impressive win and certainly one of the biggest of his career. Sheppard finished a solid second with Lucas Schott, Tyler Wolff and Rodney Sanders completing the top five.
Again forgive me for saying so, but it was very disappointing to go from one of the best features of,the year on Friday night to one of the very worst on Saturday, simply because they couldn't leave well enough alone and let the track develop and instead over thought and out engineered themselves.
The announcing trio of Chris Stepan, Warren Hardy and infield announcer Scott Stiles was as good as any group I have heard from all year. After sitting dark on Friday night, it was also good to see the scoreboard up and operating on Saturday as the lap count, if nothing else, is a valuable and appreciated thing by the spectators.
However, let it also be said that it has been great to be attending racing in mid November and for that fact I am appreciative to both 81 Speedway and its officials and the folks from the USMTS that put this event together. An ordinary night at the races still beats just about all the other alternatives.
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