Wednesday night, January 8th, I got my first look at the Cocopah Speedway, located on the Cocopah Indian Reservation North of Somerton Arizona and near the large city of Yuma. This would be practice night for the Yuma Insurance sponsored Winter Nationals. This is a new event in its current format, with six races at this track over the next ten days. A Thursday, Friday and Saturday night program of the four classes on hand will be held for the next two weekends with activities such as another practice and a pit crew contest to keep things going during the "down" nights at midweek.
IMCA sanctioned Modifieds, Stock Cars, Sport Mods and Hobby Stocks will be competing all three nights with this series being the first national, regional and state points races of the 2020 racing season. While the three support classes are receiving good money to race also, the top focus is on the Modified class.
Yuma Insurance, the presenting sponsor of this event, is putting some extra money on the line for the Modifieds and if one driver is able to win all six feature races over the next two weekends, he will receive an extra twenty five thousand dollar bonus! Five wins is worth fifteen thousand dollars and four wins will earn a driver five grand. This is certainly some big money but based on the level of competition that I saw at practice last night, it seems unlikely that anyone can sweep all six features, but then again, that's the fun of it to see if someone can pull off the unexpected.
All four classes practiced on Wednesday night with by far the largest number of drivers on hand being in the Modified class. Just over forty Modifieds took to the track for practice on Wednesday with drivers from all parts of the West and Midwest on hand. There were drivers on hand from as far away as North Dakota, Montana, Colorado, Texas, Iowa, Arkansas, Oregon, Wyoming and Alberta Canada on hand making laps as well as regional drivers from Arizona and California.
Not all of them had working transponders but among those that did, the quickest lap was turned by Tucson driver Jake O'Neil. Others that appeared very fast included R.C. Whitwell, Tom Berry, Tim Ward, Terry Hurt, Casey Arneson, Lance Mari and Justen Yeager. With all those and many others on hand, you can see that winning six in a row is going to take a herculean effort and probably a little bit of luck.
As nearly always is the case, there were a few drivers that appeared to have some serious issues during practice. That would include some heavy smoking from the cars of Marvin Mueller and Mike Magee while it appeared that the motors of Missouri's Jardin Fuller and Texas Stock Car driver Leslie Gill suffered some real serious issues as well.
For fans that might be interested, it was noted that Tim Ward and Nebraska's Hurt were in Rage chassis while Berry was sporting a Razor chassis for this event.
The other three classes also practiced but the numbers in those classes was dramatically smaller largely due to the fact that most of the drivers to likely race in those three classes are more local and probably didn't feel the need to have to practice in the same type numbers as the Mods. Also, there aren't nearly as many weekly competitors in those classes as the Mods and in fact, Stock Cars don't race here as a part of the weekly program so all in those classes have to be from out of town which would likely hold down the number.
It was noted that Stock Car drivers were on hand from as far away as Texas, Iowa, Minnesota and Canada with Chanse Hollatz, Troy Jerovetz, Andy Altenburg and Brendan LaBatte all pulling a long distance.
A sampling of the Sport Mod drivers on hand found Iowans Tyler Inman and Cody Thompson, both in Razor chassis, turning some of the fastest laps in that class. Inman told me he is just racing this first weekend as he has to fly back home and take some final tests next week and hopes to return for the series next month.
I am off to quite a roll here early in 2020. After not having been to a new track for two years, I have now visited two tracks for the first time ever here in the first ten days of the new year. And I might add, both tracks are first class facilities that I have seen.
Cocopah Speedway is built in the side of a bluff, across the highway from the Cocopah Casino which is also owned by the tribe. I was originally told it was a half mile track but it didn't look quite that big to me and in fact, the announcers for the practice night were calling it a three eighth mile which seemed just about right to me.
The track is wide and semi banked with also quite a bit of banking down the back chute which looks like it goes downhill all the way into turn three and then the drivers race uphill down the front chute, but my eyes might have been playing tricks on me in that regard. In any event, the track was quite heavy and fast for practice and while it did roll up just a bit in the corners as practice continued, the drivers had no trouble negotiating the track.
Just as last week in New Mexico, this track also checks off most of the boxes that you would want to see offered by a dirt track. The parking lot is huge, the grandstands are spectacularly large with concrete all over for easy walking purposes on sidewalks and the concourse area. The track has very good lighting and an excellent pa system for both the fans and in the pits. It has a nice scoreboard with VIP suites at the end of the grandstand. The restrooms are very nice and in one of the few tracks that offers such things, even nice restrooms in the pits and thankfully, no satellites necessary. The concession area is large and has lots of offerings.
I'm told that when the tribe took over management of the facility, they ripped out all the wooden spectator bleachers and replaced them with wide cement slabs and the seating is almost unlimited. Surprisingly to me, with the wide cement slabs, I would have thought that lawn chairs would be the hot "setup" here so I was surprised to find out that they are now allowed and it's simply blankets on the cement slabs. The cement slabs are wide enough that I would have thought they would be the way to go and you see more and more people finding spots at tracks to sit in lawn chairs, but chairs that have legs are not allowed here.
The pit area has been expanded since their last race last Fall and offers an interesting three tiered set up for the racers. The top tier is up on the flat surface and in line with the spectator parking lots while the second tier is cut into the side of the bluff with the lower tier in the valley just West of the racing surface itself. The parking spaces are all lined off and maximum use is obtained from the space they have, which was a concern coming into this event if they would have room for all the competitors. Portable lights are everywhere in the pits to aid the racers.
This track offers a very scenic and divergent view of the whole facility from the hillside grandstand or parking lot. Just behind the track is a cement irrigation ditch that is full of water. In fact, the track sucks water out of this ditch to water the track and parking lots. But on one side of the track, the terrain is brown with the earth cracked from the heat of the sun and across the drainage ditch the landscape is lush, with lettuce fields as far as the eye can see ready to be harvested and next to the lettuce, orange groves with the oranges turning color and nearing harvest also. It is an amazing example of how water can turn would look to be un plant able soil into productive cropland.
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