Friday night, August 21st was another in a seemingly endless season of special events at the Mississippi Thunder Speedway near Fountain City Wisconsin. Friday night's race was named the Dairyland Challenge and the headline events were dual, five thousand to win feature races for the open Late Models and the USRA Modifieds. Also on the card would be two divisions that race weekly at the track, the USRA sanctioned B Mods and the Hobby Stocks.
While many tracks across the country have struggled this year, MTS would surely have to be classified as one of the few tracks that has had a banner season, pandemic or not. They drew plenty of publicity early on when they decided to race come hell or high water, governmental approval or not. They have had special event after special event and have always seemed to be able to line up sponsors to cover their costs. They have also had excellent weather, with not a single weather related problem so far this year and have had very good crowds, probably the combination of good weather, an interesting variety of events and very delayed starts to the racing season by several of the tracks surrounding them.
Even today, as race cars were filing into the pits before the program, more work was being done to the facility in the way of improvements and expansion. A bulldozer was moving around fill, free to them from a local foundry, to level off more area as a precursor to expanding their pits even more in anticipation of them needing more space. Also, off the West end of the track, fill be being placed there with the plan being to build up the entire area and make that corner tiered parking for motorhomes etc where one can watch the races from the comfort of their own vehicle. This is part of their plan to bring in even larger events in the seasons to come. While this track has always been a Modified hotbed, they are leaning more and more toward the Late Model class this year. Not coincidentally, track owner Bob Timm's son Jake is becoming a force racing the Late Models and has participated in a number of larger shows across the Midwest in his spare time this Summer.
The track announcers, in their lead up to Friday night's show as the cars were waiting to start racing, made a point of telling how lucky they had been with the year, flying in the face of what most tracks have had to endure. They also made a point of describing what fine weather they have had all year with no issues to speak of, which of course would come back to bit them later on in the evening.
Lots of qualifying events would be on the schedule this night with one hundred and twelve cars on hand in just the four classes. That meant multiple heat races for all classes and a couple of B Features too. The evening started out hot and incredibly humid, which made for a fast track but before the sun set, thunderheads could be seen building around the area and those would be the indicators of what we would be dealing with later.
Even though MTS races USRA Late Models weekly, their special events for the Late Models have been gravitating toward the open motor cars. For this show, they were racing the "hybrid" Lates, which means that spec engine WISSOTA cars would be racing with the open motor cars, with the open motor cars required to run a carburetor plate or add weight on the motor plate of the car. Most go with the plate, not wishing to slug down the cars with extra weight on the nose. Even Friday, more than half the cars are of the WISSOTA variety as that is the popular sanctioning body in this area for Late Models and while the open motor cars still have an advantage I believe, the WISSOTA cars are competitive enough that they come to race and occasionally do pull off the upset.
By the time the qualifying events were over, the lightning was flashing in the sky both to the North and West of the speedway. The Coulee county along the river does produce some unusual weather patterns from time to time but according to most people's phones, tablets etc, the rains were heading toward the track and the free time was limited. While they were doing a good job moving the show along, they had quite a number of races to run and if there is one staple of racing when time trials are used to set the lineups, it is the unalterable fact that a race program never starts on time as scheduled if time trials are to proceed the racing. And of course, such was again the case on Friday with the first race not taking the green until 7:50 pm and that lost time would come back to bite the track later.
I will not second guess the management because "Monday morning quarterbacking" is a lot easier than making the calls in real time, but I will state just what did happen. When all qualifying was done, the decision was made to continue on with the schedule as planned and that meant that the Hobby Stocks and B Mods would proceed the other two feature races.
Despite the fact that the lightning was getting brighter and occasionally a little thunder could also be heard, the Hobby Stocks and then the B Mods moved to the track. And of course, following the protocol of Murphy's Law, both races would be crash and spin strewn events with multiple yellow flags to bog things down. The Hobbies had six yellows and the B Mods four in their races which dragged them out.
The Hobby Stock feature saw Steve Dwyer lead from start to finish. He got the trophy, the winner's check and the interview from the announcers. Then he got the DQ from the tech people as his car failed inspection for some issue, but we were not notified of that at the track. That was a discovery for the following morning. The new winner was Travis Krause with Chris Hovden and Scott Spilde, a pair of Iowa drivers, next in line.
The B Mod feature was quite entertaining despite all the yellow flag slowdowns. However, it was a bit difficult to focus at the same time, as we were all "eye balling" the sky at the same time the cars were racing. The B Mods were clinging to the low groove, at least most of them until Ryan Olson showed them the top side. He moved from seventh to challenge for the lead and probably might have blew by everyone and taken the win, except for the last second decision by Jim Chisholm who moved up the track at the last second and blocked Olson's line.
Chisholm found the high side to work for him also and he was able to drive into the lead as Olson's big charge seemed to have taken something out of his car and he started to fail. Chisholm continued to work the high side but then he started to get pressure from Dustin Kruse who was racing right on the inside tires. To protect himself, Chisholm moved back to the bottom to block Kruse but then in the late going, Taylor Ausrud, who runs a hellish line that includes slamming off the outside walls on a routine basis every week, was making the top side work and he closed up to challenge Chisholm for the lead.
However, Jim held on for the win over Ausrud and Kruse in what was a fairly entertaining race that unfortunately, did take up quite a bit of what time we had left.
At this point track management had a tough decision to make. Should they roll the Late Models right on to the track and start the feature or should they take the time to "farm" the track and give the Late Models the best surface they could provide. The lightning was getting very close but they needed to act. The B Mods had used much of the track but would it still hold up for another forty laps for the Late Models? That was the choice that management had to make and they opted to rework the track before rolling the Late Models. And they just didn't sprinkle a little water on the track, they completed tilled it actually multiple times and then watered it.
Unfortunately, before they could completely water it, Mother Nature decided to speed up the process and the rains started. They were light at first and there was a hope that they could still complete the program but time was against them(it was already well past 10:30 pm) and then things were resolved when it started to cut loose and there would be no saving of the track. Thus the evening was ended and for many who had come to watch either/or the Lates and Mods, they went home unsatisfied.
The announcement was made at the track that the Late Model and Modified features would now be a part of this coming Friday night's show, which is their last regular season event and also Championship night but the caveat was that folks should check the speedway website and face book page for further announcements. I did this morning and saw nothing yet so I do not know exactly what the plan is. I do know that it might be tough to expect the Late Models to drive all the way back to Fountain City for just a feature race with several of the drivers from eastern Wisconsin and Iowa.
It is too bad that the weather couldn't have held off for them for a little longer but without being picky, a little better response to the conditions and situation as presented to them probably wouldn't have hurt either. But we move on. Thanks to Bob Timm and the staff at MTS as they continue to present as many special events as perhaps any track in the Midwest.
Announced this week for their Fall special, the second week in September were three nights of Modified and B Mod racing with everyone allowed to run their own rules package as the event will be unsanctioned. Features will pay two, four and ten grand for the three nights with a full show in each class all three nights.
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