The first evening race of the six night series for the fourteenth annual Wild West Shootout at the F K Rod Ends Arizona Speedway was held on Wednesday night, January 15th. And for the first time this year, there was a repeat winner as Brandon Sheppard led all laps to earn his second straight win in the Late Model class. Other winners on Wednesday, both for the first time here in 2020 were Tanner Mullins and Zach Benson.
They still seen to be struggling just a bit with track prep this week with consistency and a wide racing groove the trouble spots. A combination of a cloudy day, the two hour later starting time and not much wind perhaps served in concert to provide a race track that was much wetter than it had been for each of the two previous events and it produced a lightning fast track that provided some hair raising fast laps but also made passing tough and proved to be tough on the equipment, particularly motors and driveshafts with seemed to be either going up in smoke or flying out on the track with alarming regularity.
A few new drivers showed up on Wednesday night with a half dozen new X Mods, some from as far away as the Dakotas, New Mexico and Missouri. A couple new Modifieds, from California and Kansas arrived and the most notable in the Late Models was Rick Eckert, who got to drive on this night after helping his car owner Allen Murray for the opening weekend. Steve Stultz, a local racer who had his motor go up in smoke last weekend, bought a car from Brian Birkhofer, lock, stock and barrel and was racing that car with a #78 plastered over Birky's #15. Justin Allen, Chad Olsen, Joe Duvall and Birky's hauler were among those on the grounds that didn't open up on Wednesday night. Logan Drake returned from California with a new motor in his Modified after blowing up while running very impressively on opening night. Later, during the course of the evening we saw the motors of Justin Rexwinkle and Matt Sparby suffer some concerning problems while Dustin Strand and Terry Phillips both lost driveshafts and Earl Pearson Jr was involved in a heat race crash that rocked his world pretty severely.
Promoter Chris Kearns made it clear at the driver's meeting that this night, as a midweek show, is most important to get done in a very prompt manner and attempt to reduce the noise complaints from neighbors, which are apparently getting more profound by the year. In fact, the rumors persist that this track will soon be either overcome by real estate development or forced into some sort of land use action like that simply because the complaints will have had success. I guess only time will tell on that matter. The goal was to try and get the show done by 9:30 pm, a hefty goal given that three classes were running full programs and the start time was not until 6:30 pm which they did meet . And in fact, they might have reached that goal except that they opted to move quite a bit of dirt after the Modified feature in an attempt to provide more passing for the Late Models. The amount of dirt they graded no doubt gave the Late Model teams pause, and while the groove seemed to move around a bit more in their feature than perhaps it normally would, I didn't notice any other significant changes that would have justified such a significant delay.
All three of the feature races saw wire to wire wins with the eventual victor having led all laps. However, that is not to say that the mains were bad shows as there was a lot of passing and fighting for position and even a couple threats to the leader, but no changes actually took place.
Sheppard started on the outside pole and took an immediately lead over Cade Dillard and Jimmy Mars. The later two battled back and forth for that spot while Ricky Weiss and Brian Shirley moved up also. Dillard would eventually secure the second spot and in fact he began to make some time on Sheppard until he plunked the first turn wall and was done.
Sheppard then pulled away on the restart as the battle was for second and that race for position allowed Sheppard to pull away unchallenged. He didn't even need "Joe" on this night as he would eventually open up nearly a full chute on the field. Mars and Weiss had a good battle for second with Mars flexing some strength at the end and taking the spot, certainly the highlight of his southern trip so far. Shirley and Chase Junghans, from twenty third, would complete the top five.
Tanner Mullins, 2019 NCRA champ, was up to the task in the Modifieds Wednesday, as he led from start to finish to win the main event. Truly, he was never challenged in the race as he was able to maintain a few car lengths on the field throughout the event. The star of the event, in my mind, was young Calvin Iverson, as the rookie Modified driver kept the heat on Mullins throughout the event and engaged in a great battle for second with Jake O'Neil.
As Mullins remained comfortably in front, Iverson and O'Neil went back and forth for second with O'Neil finally claiming the spot and although he settled for third, Iverson showed me much on this night. Also, his motor was smoking heavily all night , seemingly ready to blow at any second, but it held firm all night and they will now take the off day to figure out what is making his car into "old smokey."
Lucas Schott and Rodney Sanders battled back and forth for fourth all race with Schott fighting off all challenges for the position as somewhere Sanders has lost the edge that he maintained last week in New Mexico and is now searching to find out what has changed.
Unheralded Zach Benson, from Princeton MN, led from wire to wire to win the X Mod main event. Benson, relatively new at the sport but a strong runner in east central Minnesota, fought off challenges from both Josh Cain and Sketter Estey to take the win. Cain and Estey moved up from the fifth and sixth row to be the primary challengers to Benson after some wild early scrambling in the main event that created much excitement and changing of positions.
Estey would fight off Cain and then set sail after Benson and he was reeling in the leader as the laps ran down. A late yellow when Steve Muilenburg stalled set up a three lap dash to the finish but Benson hit his marks, was quick off the bottom lane and held off Estey for his most impressive win ever. Lance Schill had his third top five finish of the week and was joined in the top five by Troy Hovey.
The Modified field was down a bit for this midweek show but both the X Mods and Late Models maintained to the mid forty number of cars. I knew the crowd was a good one for the midweek show which historically is the smallest of the six nights and I was not surprised when they announced it as the largest Wednesday night crowd in the event's history. To that I say good for them. I'm happy that people are supporting the series and even coming out to the midweek shows. With good weather seemingly in the forecast, as opposed to at home where everyone is getting ready to break out the long handles and snow shovels. more records may be set this weekend.
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