There was a Booger sitting on the Toilet Bowl following the Late Model feature race Saturday night at the Clarksville Speedway. However, that Booger had a last name of Brooks and he did a fine job holding off the challenges of Brian Shirley and Donald McIntosh to win the thirty lap Late Model main event and head back to Chattanooga with five thousand additional dollars in his racing account in the highlight event of the fourteenth annual Toilet Bowl which was completed on Saturday night.
An overflow pit area and sunny weather greeted the good crowd on hand for the second night of the Toilet Bowl. It was reported that two hundred and seven cars had signed in to race for Saturday night's show and I will take management on their word for that. In addition to the six classes that raced on Friday night, we also had the additional classes of Pure Mini Stocks, Mini Mods, Dwarf Cars and they even dug up seven Cruisers from somewhere that also raced. And interestingly, while some of the Cruisers had two seats and the set up for both a pilot and co-pilot which is the Cruisers that I am familiar with, there was only one person in each car as that class raced so I guess they were just "half Cruisers." In any event, there appeared to be a class for anyone that had a race car to bring and there was more than enough racing action to satisfy the most thirsty of fans.
A tight starting time of 2:30 pm ended up being just one hour and fifteen minutes later as they sorted out the paperwork before the first car hit the track for warm ups. Everything but the Cruisers also had to qualify which meant that we put over four hundred laps on the track on a sunny late afternoon before the first race ever took the green flag. No wonder that the track took rubber about as deep as I have ever seen. In fact, I had rubber on my face after the show was over that looked to be about as heavy as a picture of Ernie Derr's face would look like after he just got done running four hundred laps at the Iowa State Fair on a afternoon show!
The two classes that had enough cars that B Features were in order (Streets and Mods), ran heat races and B Features on Saturday before their mains while the Pure Minis also ran a B Feature. All other classes lined up for their mains directly off time trials.
Brooks led wire to wire in the Late Model feature which was slowed three times for yellow flags. Dillon Tidmore pushed Brooks hard in the first half of the race until his car started to loosen up on him and he gave up several positions. Shirley and McIntosh then moved in to challenge but after a late yellow with only five laps to go, Brooks got away well at the start and wasn't challenged at the end. He got to sit on the customized "Throne" which is surely still one of the most unique and interesting trophies around the world of racing.
Ricky Arms, who was not on hand for the Friday show, topped the qualifying, won a heat and then led wire to wire to take the Modified win. Tyler Nicely, who had terrible luck all weekend, was challenging Arms for the lead when a lapped car spun into him and wrecked his car for the second straight night.
Rick Conoyer, in his unpainted and unlettered car, drove up to second and held off Tommy Sheppard Jr for runner up honors. For the second straight night, the Modifieds had the biggest field of cars as thirty nine were on hand to try and make the main.
The other featured division was the QuickSilver Street Stocks and Tony Cruse led wire to wire to take the grand for the top spot in that race. He held off David Earl Gentry and Keaton Downing for the win with twenty nine Streets signing in to race.
Crate class winners were Christian Hanger and for the second straight night, Clayton Miller in the 357/602 class while Miller was also very competitive in the Modifieds.
The other winners were just too numerous to mention but all the results are available at the Clarksville Speedway website. Overnight work allowed them to have the track pa system working on Saturday but the information that came out of the speakers was somewhat minimal.
As I stated earlier, the crowd was a good one and they mostly stayed for the whole show, even though it got quite cool again on Saturday. The final race wrapped up just about 11 pm which meant that those of us on hand for the gate opening at Noon spent nearly twelve hours at the track. There was quite a remarkable variety of home areas represented as there were drivers on hand from at least ten different states for the Midwest opener of the 2020 racing season.
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