Harrison, Larson, T. Carpenter and Babb Second Night Dome Winners

Action at the Gateway Dirt Nationals Continued on Friday night, December 20th with all three classes in action once again. The second half of the invited Midget and Modified fields ran their qualifying events leading up to one feature in each class while the Late Models finally got on track for some racing action themselves. The field for them was split in half with double feature races qualifying a pair of three driver entries into Saturday night's finale.

With much more racing on tap for Friday night, the suspicion was that it was going to be a long night and unfortunately, those fears were not only accurate, the end result was even worse than most would have imaged. With fierce racing action that produced an almost incalculable number of yellows and wrecks, poor track conditions that led to more track prep periods than I would have the energy to keep track of, damage to the catch fence and wall from accidents that required three long breaks for repairs, some poor driving decisions by racers and some poor choices made by management and the sum total was two calendar days of racing for the price of one! This however, was not the type of racing bargain that most were looking for.

Here is the unvarnished  truth. As long as they are going to try to make a racing surface out of the material that they are currently using, I  believe they never are going to produce a surface that is worthy of racing on. I don't care how many experts they bring in to prepare the track and how much they pack, blade, scrape, feather, cut and pound on it, this "beach sand" they are using is never going to compact into anything worth racing on. No matter what they do to it, and no matter how they try to improve it, it just rolls right back up into waves of loose material that digs holes and doesn't smooth out. They keep trying to fill in the holes with loose material they scrape off the track, and that just digs right back out and forms new holes. And the most maddening thing is that we have seen literally hours of track packing going on that is negated in a couple laps, thus wasting all our time and not helping track conditions by one iota. They might as well just give in to the inevitable, throw a little water on the track to keep the dust down and let the drivers bounce through the holes because all the wasted time on track prep is just that, time wasted that we could have been done with the shows in hours less time.

Even the announcers have given up trying to "sugar coat" the truth as they halfway through the evening stopped referring to the track as "challenging" and one that the track prep crew could and would fix and they just went to describing the track as "rough."

And it's a car killer. The amount of damage done on Friday night to cars in all three classes was just staggering with thousands and thousands of dollars worth of equipment being wrecked. But the racing was spectacular in all three classes too. Somewhere there needs to be a happy medium to where the racing can still be good but doesn't cause so much damage to the race cars. Somehow they need to get their hands on some real clay and let Kevin Gundaker and his crew have something that they can really work on rather than playing with the sand they currently have.

Apparently the Modifieds have been declared to be the "bad guys." It has been determined that they were the worst offenders at tearing up the track so for Friday night, the whole program for the other two classes was completed before they were even allowed to hit the track for time trials which were followed up by their three heats and main event. However, based on the number of yellows across the board and the track conditions which didn't seem any different whether or not the Modifieds had been out earlier in the evening or not, that theory didn't seem to hold water either. And they got to run their program in the wee hours of the morning with most of the crowd having vacated the building on a night that got so late I literally saw adults sleeping in their seats from track prep boredom and the lateness of the hour.

The drivers didn't help the situation either. Apparently there is a group that comes to this race with the notion that actually slowing down for the corners would be a sign of weakness. So, they "flatfoot" the accelerator from the moment the green flag drops and don't slow for anything or anyone. The results is a demo derby on wheels with many of the cars looking much the worse for the wear.

It was a "perfect storm" also in terms of what could go wrong to slow the program with three different wrecks that saw cars get into and tear down the wheel fence which necessitated long delays to replace fence and posts. The repair crew did an amazing job of fixing what the drivers did as fast as possible but it does take time to replace the posts and put fence back up and we had to suffer three times when that happened.

Management made a poor choice in terms of moving the show along when they allowed all eighty plus of the Late Models to hot lap again on Friday after all were allowed to do so on Thursday night too. All other classes got only one shot at hot laps so I don't understand why the Late Models had to go through a second tedious set of hot laps that only did more damage to the track. Worst of all, instead of starting at 3 pm it was two hours later than that before the first race took the green. That was two hours they desperately could have used later. It was disappointing that such a crack management team would make such decisions, particularly when they have been preaching all week about getting the show done early so that all the spectators can spend their money in downtown St. Louis when by the time the races have been completed, there is no place open still to spend money in.

As far as the racing itself, it was spectacular with all three classes putting on a great show. However, only one driver can walk away from this weekend with the big check, and with all the damage inflicted on so many cars, one wonders when the "light bulb"  will come on and some of these racers will stay home and save on their equipment. It appears that has already happened in the Mods and Midgets with neither class filling out their invited field fully.

Drama started early when the first Late Model heat was stacked and the unexpected occurred, with Scott Bloomquist going up in smoke on the green after he and Freddie Carpenter spent time trying to "one up" each other on the opening green. Reportedly, "Bloomer's" problem stemmed from someone not putting oil in the engine while Carpenter was out shortly after when he lost a driveshaft after being quick qualifier for group A. So they ran off two spectacular heats and then the track equipment came out to try and fiddle with the surface and made something out of it. Thus the pattern of the night was set. Race a little and then watch track prep for what extended into hours.

Freddie's son Tyler was one of the "talking points" of the night. First he engaged in a wild slide job contest with Tanner English in his heat, following by an "F Bomb" interview that fired up the crowd but seemed not very appropriate. Then, in the first Late Model feature he came from third to pass Illinois' drivers Mike Spatola and Ryan Unzicker to take a thrilling win. This was followed by a lengthy rambling interview that included more profanity and branded Carpenter to what he is, a true West Virginia "hillbilly" who can also wheel a race car spectacularly and sometimes also successfully.

Shannon Babb was slightly more restrained but still excited when he won the second feature race for the Late Models by passing Patrik Daniel who most people were flipping through their program to find out just who this was that was beating the indoor expert in Babb. Babb's win was not unexpected but a bit of a surprise in that he got beat initially by Daniel and had to work very hard to make the winning pass.

As was the case on Thursday night, the Midgets had just two heats and a feature race. Kyle Larson showed much strength as he made the winning pass on Michael Pickens and then pulled away. Truthfully, the Midgets are able to negotiate the choppy conditions much better than the other two classes and don't seem to tear up near as much equipment. Young Cannon McIntosh charged up at the end to take second and will be a serious contender for Saturday night honors.

With a largely empty building left for the Modifieds after a very good crowd was on hand earlier, Mike Harrison bounced his way to the win after starting on the pole and fighting off Kyle Bronson. Bronson and Michael Long had a good battle for second and despite Bronson's car pumping out much water in the late going, he was able to hand of for third before a cloud of steam erupted on the slow down lap. Kevin Wallace also ventilated a motor during this race as many cars were running hot due to all the dust plugging up the radiators.

The final checkered flag flew at 1:48 am on Saturday morning. Yikes! As I say, there was much positive to say about tonight's racing but also many things that did go wrong with some that need to be corrected and some that should have been foreseen but apparently overlooked. Saturday's program is promised to begin with racing at 3 pm for the Last Chance races so we will see how this all plays out.