The fourth annual Gateway Dirt Nationals presented by Arizona Sport Shirts kicked of its three night run on Thursday night, December 19th at the Dome at America's Center in St. Louis Missouri. For the first time, there was snow on the ground for this event, the result of a snow storm that crossed the Midwest earlier this week, but everything was cleared away and all was in readiness for the racers and fans by Thursday when the action started.
Once again this year, three classes of cars would be racing in the Dome with the Late Models the highlight division with all entrants being allowed to race up to one hundred and fifty cars. And again this year, they did not come close to that number with eighty six actually on hand and two of those never made it to the track. Actually, the car count in the Late Models was the lowest it has been for the four years of this race.
For the second year, Modifieds and Midgets also raced but their format was changed up a bit this year. Those receiving invitations and accepting were then divided into two groups with half the car qualifying and racing their preliminary show on this night and the other half running on Friday night. Then everyone comes back on Saturday night for the big finale with everyone getting one last shot to make the "show." The numbers in these two classes were down this year with the Midget count being particularly low. There were only twenty five Mods and nineteen Midgets on hand on Thursday with the number expected to be similar on Friday night. Perhaps this might be a good time to step back and maybe reduce the number of classes to two for next year and perhaps maybe finally be able to maintain their posted schedule of events. It appears that the Midgets don't want to race so close to the upcoming Chili Bowl for fear of tearing up their cars or perhaps they just don't want to allocate a week for this event and then soon after have to spend another week in Tulsa. In any event, lesser just might be better in terms of number of cars racing here in St. Louis.
The track looked a little bit different this year. There is an inside wall in the corners instead of those insufferable tires that caused many of the yellow flags last year and tore up a bunch of equipment. Opening night action seemed to bear out the fact that the wall works much better, keeping people out of the infield without causing all the damage that the tires inflicted last year.
The track has been banked a bit more this year and in a different manner, as track officials seek to widen out the racing groove and move the cars up the track more. The inside line is quite flat for the first car length and then the banking increases as you move higher on the track. With just time trials for the Late Models, we will have to wait until Friday night to see if the track races any different than it did before. I would have to say that I didn't notice any large difference in the way that the Mods and Midgets raced the track than last year, but we will see.
The same issues of the rough track continued as it seems that it is almost impossible to build a track indoors in a week and then expect it to stay smooth and bump free. And I think that the heavier Late Models and Mods make this problem even worse than if it were to be a Midget only track such as in Tulsa. Some of the drivers made the point that with the banking being higher, track speeds are actually faster than last year so the cars hit the corners even faster and tend to dig in even harder which leads to the higher likelihood of bumping around and getting airborne.
Another good point made by the announcers was the fact that the dirt used here is the same as the dirt used for Motocross and other arena events and is much sandier than that of many racing surfaces, including Tulsa's indoor dirt. The stuff doesn't want to pack in very well and doesn't seem to bind well either and while the bike racers want the surface to rut up, just the opposite is the desire here. But it is what it is and while the track prep crew will work their hardest to get it better, anyone entering this event should have been aware just what kind of race surface they would be dealing with. And it is hard on the cars, as they tear up a lot of equipment for sure, but again that is part of the understanding of entering this event. And for sure, the track prep and this race surface is probably the most analysed of any all year, to the point of nausea.
Time trials were first on the card and this did provide some surprises with a number of what I would call surprise drivers that ranked among the quickest of the entire night. But the most dramatic moment of this event was when Shannon Babb came out as the last car of the eighty four that would qualify and he set fast time by over a tenth of a second over the entire field. The crowd went wild as they should have as it was quite a stunning moment but given Babb's expertise on "bullrings", something that perhaps should have been expected. An amusing moment saw Billy Moyer manage to snag some of the advertising banners against the outside wall with his spoiler when he clipped the wall during his qualifying effort and a stretch of about two hundred feet of banner followed him down the track before finally becoming disengaged. Moyer did have a very fast lap and interestingly, was driving a Capital chassis this weekend.
So, after time trials, the Late Models were done for the night with their heats, B Features and qualifying feature races taking place on Friday night.
The Midgets then qualified and were then directly followed by their heats and their feature as their entire program was run off next. My guess was that they wanted to get this class done while the track was as smooth as it would be. However, this dragged things out some as there needed to be time after qualifying to set the lineups and then a few minutes for the feature to be formed after heats. The Midget field was so small that no B Feature was needed and will likely be the same on Friday.
However, the Midget feature race was by far the best event of the night. It was dry and slick on the inside lane but had some bite up a lane so it was perfect for throwing "side jobs" and we saw a number of those in the main event. Justin Grant led for most of the race but Thomas Meseraull moved into second and on the last two laps, they exchanged the lead twice each lap as they dive bomber each other in the corners. On the final corner, Grant dove in low to take the lead but when he slid up the track, Meseraull was right there to cut under him and beat him to the line in a race that was appreciated by the fans. There were three quick yellow flags that included two roll overs but the lat fifteen laps went nonstop and provided the kind of action that the fans were waiting for.
The Mods then qualified after both the other two classes were done for the night and then they raced their program, but the same kind of breaks were necessary with only the one class left. As it was, teams were terribly rushed to get back to the track following heats for the B, and the same for the main following the B Feature.
The Modified feature saw Josh Harris lead for the first half of the race before Levi Kissinger took advantage of a restart to blast past him and take over the top spot. Harris was slowed by a deflating tire and Derek Losh made a charge that saw him challenge Kissinger at the end for the win.
The Mod feature was a pretty good race also with only three yellows and all came in the first half of the race. A surprise saw Bobby Pierce, pressing for the lead, make a mistake on a restart and tip over in turn one which ended his event. There were five roll overs during the night which was more than I would have expected including a couple in the Mods. There were also plenty of torn up race cars in all three classes but that is the norm in this type of racing.
It was a very long day of racing with the first on track activity starting at 3 pm and the final checkered waving toward the Midnight hour. The first actual racing took place about forty five minutes later than scheduled and we actually saw only eight real races all night as hot laps and qualifying does take a long, long time. This was a night for the hard core race fan only as we saw more of the track prep equipment on the racing surface by far than any race cars. But in their defense, they are just trying to make the racing surface as good as possible and the coming two nights will be telling as to whether or not their efforts prove fruitful.
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