Saturday, January 4th saw round two of the inaugural Battle at the Border take place at Royal Jones' Vado Speedway Park in Vado New Mexico. Once again it would be the World of Outlaws Late Models taking center stage with the USRA Modifieds and X Mods also in action for a full program.
Saturday's show, as well as the upcoming show on Sunday, have been "flexed" on their starting times by the Outlaws and track management with everything starting an hour earlier than previously announced. And with earlier starting starting times already planned for the weekend shows and the evenings still getting quite cool, the show for Saturday saw hot laps for the Late Models and Mods start at 3 pm with the first official race scheduled to hit the track at 4 pm.
With the earlier start times and action starting under a blazing New Mexico sun, there was a concern about what track conditions would be but as it turned out, there really didn't seem to be any noticeable difference in hot the track raced than when they started later on Friday night.
They did do considerably more track prep on Saturday that saw them "rip" the track quickly a couple of times and the track was much wetter to begin the program than it had been on Friday night. While part of this might have been due to the earlier starting time, I'm guessing it was just as much a product of the Friday night racing on the icy slick surface that had even the local weekly racers expressing surprise on how slick it was. In fact, I talked to a couple of the local racers who were surprised how different the track was racing this week than for their normal shows. They told me that weekly they start out right on the bottom and the groove gradually moves up the track until they are up against the wall by feature time. We have not seen that yet this weekend but they also pointed out that this is the first time in the track's short history that this many wide tired Late Models have been pounding the track too. Their track prep skills will really get put to the test later this Spring when the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars stop in Vado for a two night program.
Car counts were remarkably similar to the opening night field in all three classes. Late Models again fielded forty two cars with the only changes being that Jake Gallardo was sidelined on Saturday with valve spring issues while Javier Zapien Jr, who missed the opening night of racing after having practice night problems, was on hand Saturday. It didn't go any better for him on Saturday though, as he pulled into the infield within seconds of rolling on the track, went off on the bad end of the wrecker and was not seen the rest of the night. Don Shaw also had problems in hot laps that caused him to miss his heat race and without a qualifying effort under the Outlaw format, your chances of making the show are about nil unless you have a provisional in your pocket.
One more Mod was on hand than Friday night's show and one less X Mod made an appearance as wrecks and mechanical issues were not in large evidence on Friday. They, however, would be more evident during the Saturday program.
I took the opportunity on Saturday to visit on with local X Mod racer Dickie Gorham, a long time racer in this area at a number of different Southwestern tracks. He told me that the racers of this area are very grateful to Royal Jones for building such a beautiful facility and thankful that they have a place to race. Dickie is a native of Las Cruces and an employee of NASA who have a test and research facility near Las Cruces where he has worked for many years after he got his engineering degree. He is a very interesting person to visit with and has a son who races X Mods also while his daughter races 305 Sprints. He raced Modifieds for years until that class got too expense for his tastes.
The format was the same as Friday night's in all three classes and after all qualifying, for the second straight night management opted to run the Late Model feature first which seemed to be a popular move as approved by the crowd on yet another cool night in the high desert.
The same three cars would end up with podium finishes as on Friday night, only in a different finishing order. Chris Madden would take the early lead after redrawing the pole and would lead the first fourteen laps until Ricky Weiss was able to get under him to take over the lead. Madden appeared to be struggling in the corners and not able to run the bottom as he wished while Weiss seemed able to pick up the pace.
When they got into lapped traffic things got dicey, but Weiss was able to make all the right moves and at the end was able to stretch his lead over Brandon Sheppard and Madden to take the win. For Weiss, it ended a full season of frustration after running strong on many occasions but not being able to secure his first win. Darrell Lanigan had a strong run for fourth with Mike Marlar again strong.
Somewhat surprising was the struggles of Scott Bloomquist who faded quickly quickly and finished seventeenth and for the second straight night Bobby Pierce was a non factor. Sunday night's show will feature a seventy five lap feature race so it will be interesting to see if there is any differences in strategy with the longer race.
Even though there didn't seem to be a problem on Friday night with excessive yellow flags, the Mods and X Mods operated under a one spin rule for the heat races on Saturday night and that did trip up a few competitors early.
For the second straight night, it was Rodney Sanders who won the Modified feature race although he had to work much harder to get the win on Saturday. And the surprise of the weekend to this point was the strong performance of rookie Modified driver Calvin Iverson who led the first half of the main before being overtaken by Sanders.
Iverson is in his fourth year of racing and his backround is in Midwest Mods with a few Street Stock runs also. Iverson is a former WISSOTA National Rookie of the Year in the MidMods and last year they bought an MB Mod from Jimmy Mars that Iverson only raced on a couple of occasions. This year he is going to focus on the Mod but this is the first weekend he has raced that car exclusively. Not known to many was the fact that shortly before the race program started, it was not even known whether he would race or not on Saturday. He had damaged his oil pan during the show on Friday night and his father Kelly had rushed into town to get the pan welded and when I exited the pits, Calvin was still waiting for his return and they were contemplating having to go to the back up motor which was a WISSOTA spec engine that would be well over a hundred horse less than the 413 Tim's motor that he had in the car.
Well, he did make the show and pulled away at the start, leading and putting distance on the field until Sanders, who's bold moves on the high side of the track allowed him to move up from his tenth starting spot, allowed him to race past Iverson for the lead. Calvin was able to stay right with Sanders until Rodney worked through heavy lapped traffic and gradually pulled away. Mitch Keeter finished a strong third with Bumper Jones following him as only ten cars finished on the lead lap at the end.
There was a hard crash during this race, by far the worst of the weekend to date, and the cars of Monte Bolton, Tyler Wolff, Royal Jones and Ricardo Olague Jr were all heavily damaged so we may be down a few cars on Sunday.
The X Mod feature saw several of the same cars up front for the second straight night. After a great early battle between Dillon McCowan and Brock Gronwald, it was the "Brockstar" who made the pass to take the lead. three first half race yellows kept the field packed and Josh Cain came up to challenge Gronwald for the lead.
However, Gronwald settled in and gradually began to pull away from Cain as the last eight laps ran off nonstop. Gronwald, known as a "cushion pusher" back in his Minnesota home area, rides the cushion come Hell or high water and on Saturday night it worked as he gradually pulled away for the win. Cain and McCowan would follow him to the checkered.
Not known to many was the fact that Gronwald could easily have made Saturday night's win his second in a row, except for a controversial situation that happened on Friday night. Gronwald was leading the feature on Friday night when he slowed suddenly and then picked the pace back up , but only after dropping back to fourth. As it turns out, a track official spoke into the one way raceceiver calling for a yellow which Gronwald heard and then slowed, only for the track official to rescind the yellow and keep the race going, but by then Gronwald had lost the lead and wasn't able to regain it from Fito Gallardo.
Officials for the second straight night ran off a very quick program. It did start about twenty minutes late due to some extra track prep called for before time trials but then things moved right along and the show itself lasted three hours nearly to the minute with the final checkered at 7:20 pm.
More on the facility at Vado: this track has more security people that are all packing "heat" than any track I've ever been too but they, along with all the other employees , are very friendly and accommodating.
All driveways into the track and roads within the parking lot are paved and the main parking lot looks more like a mall parking lot with fancy stone walls, angled parking and islands. It reminds me much of the parking lot at U.S.A. Raceway in Tucson in that regard. Check off some more boxes.
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