The midweek show is always the toughest for the Wild West Shootout. And so this pattern continued as the third race in this, the fifteenth edition of this special event, was held on Wednesday night, January 13th.
The midweek show is always under the gun because of a very strict curfew and in an effort to rush things along as much as possible, sometimes some corners are cut. The poor X Mods get only six lap heats which is tough with big fields using passing points. Sometimes needed track prep is either not done or done in a modest way and sometimes it seems like they settle a little bit quicker on restart lineups when perhaps there might be some question as to their complete accuracy. All of this and more gives this program a feeling of a wild scramble without total control being exerted.
However, the field of cars was just as strong as it was the past weekend and that is often not the case for the midweek show with one hundred and seventy drivers signing in to race in just the three classes with eight drivers turning their first laps of the week.
The program format was exactly the same as the previous two shows as they had enough cars to warrant the four X Mod heats plus six in the other two classes. Double B Features wrapped up the preliminaries and just as they had done on Sunday, the Late Models hit the track first for their main event. Many of the spectators appreciated that on a work night plus it turned quite cool as soon as the sun set and it was just as miserable as an early Spring race in the Midwest on this night.
The theme of the evening seemed to continue as the feature races were less than scintillating with not a great deal of passing and after the track rubbered up quite early in the Late Model main, the trick the rest of the evening was just to keep your race car in the rubber and make it hard to pass.
For Jonathan Davenport, his great week of racing continued as he won his second feature of the series to go along with a second place finish and once again the rest was between the same two cars as he and Ricky Thornton Jr were the two dominant cars. However, while Davenport led all twenty five laps, Thornton Jr was not around at the finish after he and Brian Shirley got together while battling for second following a restart on the tricky berm in turn two and both cars would be eliminated from the contest.
Tyler Erb made a strong run up through the field as for the first time this week he showed some speed and he was able to make his way to Davenport's rear bumper, following closely and hoping for a mistake. The action did get a bit spirited when Davenport tried to get passed a slower car to lap that vehicle and Erb made a bold move to the inside and tried to pass both cars. Davenport and Erb came together several times as they left corner four and no matter how hard Erb tried to push Davenport up the track, Jonathan would have none of it and fought off Erb's challenge.
The rest of the way they ran in formation with Jason Papich getting a nice third place finish over Mike Marlar and Bobby Pierce who had gotten a piece of the Thornton Jr and Shirley tangle and finished with a badly torn up car that still ran good however.
The X Mod feature saw several cars scrambling in a pack for the early lead with Scott Bintz, Cole Campbell, Brian Kakela , Preston Carr and Brock Gronwald all battling for the top spot. Carr, however, was able to find a hole and drive up into the lead but the other challengers were taking turns at the second spot as the shuffle continued.
This race saw several different turns as a half dozen yellows slowed the action an it would seem that a different driver would move to the second spot following each restart but always it was Carr in the lead. Late in the contest Carr would get his severest challenge as Lance Schill would move into second and with a good run off turn two tried to get past Carr on the outside. However, there just wasn't quite room enough and the two made contact with Schill up into the wall and a broken front end for his efforts that ended his night.
A six lap sprint to the finish would see Carr hold off a spirited run by Campbell with Gronwald finishing third. For Carr it was his first feature win ever in this series and his third strong performance in a row, despite that the concrete wall wiped out a good run one night.
Speaking of a driver locked in right now, Modified racer Dustin Strand would be that person as he won his second Modified main of the series with a wire to wire finish. Strand, who is always very competitive in this series but has been plagued over the years by mechanical issues, so far has had none of that this year. He started third but with a great opening lap, drove past Fito Gallardo and Casey Skyberg to take the lead before a single lap was completed. He then led the rest of the way, always maintaining a few lengths over his challengers, no matter who they were.
And he certainly earned the win as his most frequent challenger was none other than Rodney Sanders. Sanders tried every trip in his bag but no matter where he ran on the track, he simply couldn't cut into Strand's lead. Gallardo was also a steady presence up front until he slowed with seven laps to go with a mechanical issue.
This set up a quick sprint to the finish and Strand was up to it as he put space between himself and Sanders and drove on to an uncontested win. Skyberg stayed right with the leaders and he now has had two solid runs with separate cars at separate tracks this week. Lucas Schott and Shane Sabraski filled out the top five.
Of course, as most of you now know, much after the fact and long after the official results were posted, which is what I use to complete this report, Strand was disqualified for having and illegal right front brake shut off on his car. I would assume that he must have been "ratted out" by another competitor tired of getting beaten by him since this must have been overlooked by the tech people following his earlier win this week. More technical people than I would have to weigh in on whether this is enough of a competitive advantage to even make a difference but with some of the glaring issues relative to tech that seemed to have so far been overlooked this week, this decision has a bit of an "odor" surrounding it.
All the pushing was successful as the final checkered flag waved just after 10 pm as much of the extra ceremonies etc were not held on this night, including the winners' riding of the bulls. The later starting time produced a quick track early with Thornton Jr turning the fastest time trial of the week to date at 14.535 seconds, the first of the three nights with the quick car under fifteen seconds.
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