Saturday, November 16, 2019

Sanders Edges Mullins in 81 Dandy

The last weekend of USMTS Modified racing for the 2019 racing season kicked off at C. Ray Hall's 81 Speedway in Park City Kansas on Friday night, November 15th. This was the Chisholm Trail Showdown, paying three grand to win as the opening night event of the Grant Junghans Memorial that is scheduled for Saturday night. USMTS Modifieds would be sharing the card with the B Mods with both classes running a full program of heats and features using the typical passing points method employed by the USMTS.

This is a very late show for the Midwest and even a region farther South such as Kansas can get some cool weather this time of year. However, the forecasts did moderate for this weekend and while it still did get cool on Friday night, it was by no means intolerable and quite frankly, not as cold as it was in the grand stands last weekend in Charlotte!

I was able to track down a few items of interest to me before the show began as I scoured the pit area, but some questions still remain to be answered, hopefully on Saturday.

This is the last weekend for the ownership of 81 Speedway by C. Ray Hall and his family. He has been in racing in the Wichita area for something like sixty years and certainly must rank as one of the longest standing consistent owners and operators of a race track in this country.

About six weeks ago I spoke to John Allen at a race at Lucas Oil Speedway and he told me that he was contacted by an unnamed party that was trying to either buy a racetrack in the Wichita area or build one of their own. They had made overtures to Hall about 81 Speedway but they were at that time unable to reach an agreement and were instead looking for a piece of land near Wichita to buy and build a race track. In fact, Allen was going from Wheatland to Wichita to check out a piece of property.

However, something changed since we last spoke and it is indeed this group that has purchased 81 and John Allen will be the new promoter of the track starting next year. John was in the crowd on Friday but I did not get to speak with him but hopefully will before the racing is concluded on Saturday. In any event, it will be interesting to see when their 2020 schedule is revealed.

C. Ray Hall is retaining ownership of the NCRA(National Championship Racing Assn) and is moving their headquarters to an office in Wichita. It sounds like long time announcer Warren Hardy and the rest of the employees of 81 will be out of work after Saturday night but full details on the transition have not been revealed as of yet.

Jimmy Mars was supposed to be on hand this weekend to race one of Rodney Sanders' cars but an emergency at home kept him in Wisconsin this weekend . I did see a "secret" design of his new race car which will be bright yellow with bright orange numbers but will still carry the #28 Mars has made famous. For those that haven't heard, Mars signed on with the Veit Companies to sponsor him in a multi year arrangement as his lead sponsor. Veit sponsored Jeff Wildung for over twenty years but when Jeff announced his retirement this Fall, Veit went shopping to keep their name aligned with the racing public. Wildung has driven Mars built cars the last few years and is also an upper Midwest racer so the connection was a natural. Mars will likely now travel to more national events while still maintaining his lucrative chassis business for both Mods and Late Models as well as furthering the career of his son Sam, who won his first Limited Late Model features in 2019 and will likely soon be moving up the ladder to the WISSOTA Late Models.

One Late Model driver who did show up this weekend was World of Outlaw 2019 champion Brandon Sheppard. Driving one of Dereck Ramirez's cars, it didn't take B-Shepp many laps before he figured out the Modified. Really good race car drivers can fit in behind the wheel of any race car, no matter its type, and it was only a few laps before Brandon was slinging dirt with the best of them. Despite the fact that he hadn't sat behind the wheel of a Modified for nine years. Sheppard made one of the best drives of the night, coming from seventeenth to fourth in the forty lap main event and I would say he is one of the legitimate favorites to win on Saturday night.

Sheppard was on hand to support his buddy Chase Junghans, who was also driving a Modified on this weekend as a part of the Junghans Memorial. Chase did well too, finishing second in a heat race and coming home eighth in the main event.

A strong field of forty eight Modifieds representing twelve different states signed in for night one of the weekend and the Chisholm Trail forty. Even though the car count was a good one, it was odd in that seven of the top twelve drivers in year long USMTS points opted to go to Vegas to race this weekend, even though this show paid much more money.  Five heat races and two B Features set the field of twenty four with no provisional entries this weekend except for previous winners due to it being a non point race. This weekend would be a match up between the USMTS cars and the Modified stars of the NCRA. All were allowed to run their own rules on this night, including tires but on Saturday night the rear tires on all cars must be the USMTS approved American Racers. I believe that NCRA runs the IMCA type Hoosier so I don't see that as being much of an advantage anyway, if at all.

The drivers were presented with a heavy, hammer down type of track as the cool weather and low sun angle didn't dry out the track as much as it would have during a hot July Kansas day. Therefore the groove was narrow and passing hard early on as everyone screamed around the high speed three eighth mile oval. Gradually the groove widened out and the racing moved around some although the top side was still dominant on the cushion, as it has been virtually every time I have been to this track in recent years.

However, the feature race turned out to be a classic duel between the USMTS champ, Rodney Sanders, and the NCRA champ in Tanner Mullins. It was a great, side by side, two groove racing exhibition that could not be beat.

Early in the contest, Cody Jolly, last seen by me running a B Mod, was the early leader with Tyler Wolff, Bobby Bills, Mullins and Sanders trailing. Following a restart, Jolly jumped the cushion and Mullins was right there to take over the lead with Sanders tracking him down from the second spot.

Most everyone was still pounding the cushion but it was showing signs of giving out some in turns one and two and Sanders started experimenting with running the low side on that end of the track. He made several attempts that were fought off by Mullins but Rodney was persistent.

Eventually he got up beside Mullins, was able to beat him to turn three and took over the lead. Sanders did got back to the top again but Mullins wouldn't give up and he started to close back up on Rodney. After showing himself low in turn one and nearly getting by, Rodney also dropped to the inside on turn one and still pounded the cushion in turn three and then began to draw away in the late laps of the race. However, for most of the forty laps, it was a very good race indeed. Dereck Ramirez likes the low side on any race track and he made that work as he came from thirteenth to third and was still moving forward at the checkered. Sheppard and Darren Fuqua completed the top five. It was Sanders' ninety seventh USMTS career feature win.

There were two bad crashes during the course of the evening that tempered the action. Brandon Givens went end over end in the Gressel Motorsports car during a heat race and while the car was pushed back to the pits, it did not return further.

And in the main event, Dan Powers spun across the track at the end of the front chute following a restart(he may or may not have received some help) and the tightly bunched field bearing down on him had no where to go with many very hard hits throughout the field. The cars of Powers, Ryan Gustin, Cory Crapser, Cody Schneipp, Paden Phillips and Josh Lanterman all received significant damage and were down for the night with Lanterman reported having some ill effects that required medical attention. Hopefully all will be able to make repairs and race on Saturday but it was a very bad crash.


B Mods also raced a full program with their feature paying five hundred dollars to win on Friday. Eighteen drivers from four states signed in to race on this night. The number was not expected to be high for this class as 81 Speedway does not run any kind of a B Mod class so all the drivers had to come a distance to run with no home court advantage of any kind for this event.

Most were USRA B Mods that raced and came from other tracks in Kansas and Oklahoma while there were a few IMCA Northern Sport Mods that also attended. The USRA cars were allowed to run a spoiler on this weekend, apparently to help them be competitive with the Sport Mods. I thought this a bit odd as in open shows the USRA cars have shown to be very competitive even when they haven't run a spoiler. Hopefully this is not an attempted experiment for a rule change for next year as with the B Mods running the same tires and also using the quick change rear ends, about the only way to tell the cars apart is by the size or lack thereof of a spoiler. If they give them a big spoiler too, there will be no distinguishing the two classes from one another which is a bad thing in my judgement. We really didn't learn anything about the relative performance as the B Mods on hand were far superior to the Sport Mods present, spoiler or no spoiler.

Tim VanGotten and Josh Everhart battled in the early going but it was mostly a matter of waiting for Andy Bryant to get through the traffic from seventh before he was challenging for the lead. He threw a slider on VanGotten, took the top spot and then was gone. He was much faster than his competition and drove on to an easy win, with the only complications being when three yellows bunched the field. However, each time he again pulled away to comfortable margins.

Dustin Daniels came on for the second spot while Mike Striegel, who had a terrible night overall with more spins and wrecks than he would normally be involved in for a whole year, coming from seventeenth to finish third. Hard charging cushion pounding Dustin Leatherman was next in line with VanGotten rounding out the top five.

Even though the show got started almost forty five minutes late due to the extra wheel packing required on the slick track, once they got rolling there were few breaks and for just a few minutes to get cars lined up. I always support having a limited number of classes in action during special event nights but way too many tracks are guilty of trying to pack the pits with umpteen classes on night like this.

I guarantee you that the fans on hand were grateful that the show moved along at a crisp pace and that with only two feature races to watch, those that were getting cold could head for their vehicles early, knowing that they had gotten their money's worth of racing and action and not having to camp out all night to do so. Thanks to the USMTS and 81 Speedway officials for keeping things moving.

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