After and early morning wake up call and a drive through much of Iowa and across Wisconsin, I pulled into the parking lot at 141 Speedway between the burgs of Francis Creek and Maribel. Wednesday night was night one of the twelfth annual Clash at the Creek featuring IMCA Modifieds, Stock Cars and Sport Mods.
This is one of Toby Kruse's signature events at this unique shaped track resting in the bucolic hills of eastern Wisconsin between Manitowoc and Green Bay. You know you're in "God's Country" when announcer Kruse makes a joke on a bad restart, calling it a "Minnesota Viking Cheerleader restart, plUGLY."
Modifieds will be racing for a ten thousand dollar top prize in Thursday night's fifty lap main event and Wednesday would be qualifying night, along with a full show of Stock Cars and Sport Mods, both of which will be racing for a grand.
The car counts would be impressive as they always are for this event. Seventy six Modifieds would sign in to race along with forty eight Sport Mods and thirty nine Stock Cars. Since each night's show is an independent one for the last two classes, there likely will be some additional entries on Thursday that couldn't make it for tonight's show. One hundred and sixty three cars signed in to race alone for Wednesday night's show, and that in only three classes.
The format would be pretty straight forward for the two support classes, heats, a couple or three(depending) B Features and a main event for each class. Things were slightly more confused for the Modifieds. Each driver will race twice with the lineup for the second go round of heats flipped from the first set of heats. Each driver will race against the same drivers in each heat but from a totally opposite starting position. Finishing and passing points will be calculated for both heats with the grand totals at the end of the night locking in the top ten straight into the feature on Thursday with the other drivers running Last Chance Races plus the "final four."
Drivers from fourteen or so (I lost track, sorry) states were on hand for the Modified portion of the program with cars from as far West as the coast to Arkansas and Missouri and of course, most of the other Midwestern states.
Heat races were twelve lap events with ten or so cars in each one and a total of eight heats in the first set. The support classes ran in between and then the Modifieds did eight more heats to wrap up the night.
When all was done, the top total point earned would be Terry Phillips, with his decision to race here as opposed to doing the USMTS thing so far a good choice. Ricky Thornton Jr would be second and Jeremy Thornton would be third in points. I talked to Ricky in the pits before the show and told him we missed him at Stuart and he said he would have liked to go but was afraid that if he had any problems that he wouldn't have been able to make it to 141 and that was his primary goal for the week.
Phillips showed again what a versatile driver he is, having jumped into a car he had not been racing, doing some practice laps and then winning one heat and being edged at the line for the other. It was not a particularly good night for the local drivers as only Mike Mullen, Todd Dart, Shawn Kilgore and Dave Zeitler would be among the top ten. Tyler Stevens, Ethan Dotson and Billy "The Kid" Kendall would also go directly to the main on Thursday night.
Sixteen heat races were contested for the Modifieds and that is a lot of racing on a track, plus all the support class races. They misted the track and tried to keep it in top notch shape but there was a strong sun beating down on it plus it was also quite windy. Their best efforts lasted through most of the night but it locked down pretty hard for the second set of heat races.
For those that haven't been to 141 before, it is definitely a unique shaped, one of a kind track. I would best describe it as kidney bean shaped with the three four corner much tighter that the other corner and the back straightaway is mostly a turn into the ultra tight corner three. This track throws a monkey wrench into many driver's strategy and even veteran drivers here struggle from time to time. Throw in the slick, almost icy conditions that this track normally presents, and it can be a handful, no doubt.
The other amazing thing about this track is how quickly they run off their shows. Wednesday night they had a total of thirty races. Of those races, there was only one all night that had more than one yellow flag! Amazing! Most ran green to checkered. Laying down the law at the driver's meeting plus strict enforcement of the one spin rule keep the drivers moving if they error and the yellow flag is a rare thing to see. It is also a beautiful way to run a race program if you want to keep your customers entertained and not flat bottomed as they get huge fields of cars here for regular shows and pull off the same kind of quick paced program. Toby Kruse and his staff are right there with Mike VanGenderen in running off the quick kind of program that every track operator in the country should be doing.
Wednesday, despite the logistics of signing in over one hundred and sixty cars and having them parked all over the lot, the program started at 6:05 pm and was done four hours later. I think you would be hard pressed to match that any where else.
With Tyler Soppe on the pole, it seemed that the Sport Mod feature would be decided early. However, that was not the case as Soppe just had a tough time getting his car to turn in the corners and he quickly fell back in the field. From the second row, Jeff Schmuhl drove into the lead and then pulled away from the field. There was just a single yellow on lap three(no surprise) and he was able to pull away from the pack yet not deal with lapped traffic as the field was pretty well matched up and despite only two cars not going the distance and the last eighteen laps going green, he had to deal with only a single lapped car!
Tim Warner ran second and Jayden Schmidt completed the top five in a field that saw several cars all the way from Iowa and Illinois in the field.
The Stock Car feature saw a dominating performance by Luke Lemmens. Stuart Iowa fans saw earlier this year how fast Lemmens can be and after starting on the outside pole in this race, he simply ran away from the field. A good battle with the position swapped back and forth saw Modified ace Benji LaCrosse edge out Rick Dix for second. This race was the only one all night that saw the yellow waved more than once with this one having a heaping two yellow flags, although the last nine laps ran off green.
Aaron Karcz made quite a run as he drove up from seventeenth to finish fourth. Even making the feature fields here is especially tough as with the size of the track they normally only start twenty cars in their mains.
A big crowd was on hand for this mid week preliminary which has turned into a party week for the Wisconsin faithful with the camping lot having expanded greatly over the last couple of years and many people on hand to have fun and watch a few races.
Thursday night the Modifieds will crown a new champion while the other two classes will again run full shows.
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