Wednesday night, June 16th brought forth the key qualifying night for the IMCA Modifieds that would be fighting it out for the ten grand top prize at the Clash at the Creek XIII at the 141 Speedway near Francis Creek Wisconsin. Along with the qualifying heats for the Modifieds, the IMCA Stock Cars and Sport Mods would both be running a full program of heats, B Features and a main event with the Stock Cars racing for fifteen hundred dollars to win and the Sport Mods a grand to the winner.
First an update on last night's Street Stock racing event which was held along with practice for the other three classes. Unlike for a normal weekly Saturday night show where the teching of the race cars is done in the middle of the track right after the event is completed, for this special the top three cars were run up to the garage on the property and a more thorough inspection of the cars was done. This was announced at the driver's meeting so it should not have been a surprise to anyone expect I suppose, to someone too busy to attend that meeting.
In any event, they tore the cars apart pretty good and did a lot of measuring and inspecting that isn't done on a weekly basis. And they did find gold, so to speak as both the second place cars of Cody Potter and third place finisher Shanon Guelette were found to be illegal, one for suspension issues and the other for issues that have escaped me. Winner Jesse Krahn and new second and third place finishes Eddie Anschutz and David Hoerning all passed with flying colors. And the reaction of most competitors was positive to the more thorough inspections as they felt this would "clean things up" a bit in this class.
Now on to Wednesday night's show. The program on this night would be full shows for two classes of cars that race weekly at "The Creek" and double heat races for the Modifieds. Passing points would be tallied for the two heats and the top ten in points would automatically move on to Thursday night's fifty lap main event with everyone else going into Last Chance events. The drivers would draw for their heat race assignments in the Modifieds and then the lineup for the heats would be flipped for the second go round with the drivers racing against exactly the same cars they raced against in the first heat. There are various ways of doing this, but I think running against the same cars is probably the most fair. A couple of luminaries were among the large crowd that showed up on Wednesday including Kevin Yoder from the IMCA home office in Vinton and Joe Verdegan of Joe Verdegan.com who is doing very well with his new enterprise which involves on line blogging about various aspects of racing in the north east Wisconsin area as well as also announcing at Eagle River and WIR plus Norway Michigan on a regular basis.
Car counts were strong in all three classes with one hundred and fifty three cars signing in to race in just the three classes. Modifieds led the way with seventy five of them on hand as a number of additional drivers showed up after not practicing the previous night. Sport Mods had forty one entrants and there were also thirty seven Stock Cars on hand with both of the later two classes fighting to be in the top twenty four that would race the main.
Qualifying for the two support classes would be first and would go smoothly. With the one spin rule in effect, drivers knew that no matter how badly things were going, to stop on the track would mean being sent to the pits so the races progressed mostly without the yellow flag being waved as twelve full events for these two classes were completed with only four yellow flags being waved and that was for cars that were either damaged to the point they couldn't run or just would not start after a spin or other incident.
The two feature races for the support classes would be run between the two sets of Modified heats with the Sport Mods going first. Gabe Zellner would lead all twenty laps of the main for the Sport Mods in a race that was stopped just twice with both yellows falling between laps ten and fifteen. Zellner would battle with defending track champion Randy LeMieux Jr. before pulling away as LeMieux tried the high side of the track to make a pass and that lane went away on him and he fell back and eventually would finish fourth. Gabe Zellner would be challenged by Jacob Zellner in the second half of the race but would have more than enough to hold him off for the win. Matthew Radke moved up from the third row into third position but could never make a strong run on either of the Zellners and settled for third ahead of LeMieux and Justin Green. Twenty of the starters would still be on the track at the finish.
The Stock Car feature would go nonstop for twenty laps and pole starter Eric Mahlik would lead from start to finish. However, it would not be quite that easy as things got wild in the last couple of laps. Mahlike built up a big lead in the early going while Benji LaCrosse, who did by far the best job of passing cars in the race, worked his way up into second which was a struggle on the rubbered up, single lane track. It took him a long time to get by into second but once he did, he began to reel in Mahlik at a rapid pace.
Meanwhile, Eric Arneson also broke free of the traffic and once he got to third, he too began to move into contention. With the track being narrow, it was also hard for the leader who caught the back of the pack with just a couple laps to go. Trying to work around a lapped car was tough with that car also hugging the lower lane where all the passing and racing was going on.
Arneson caught the top two who were being slowed up drastically but couldn't get by the slower car. Mahlik chose to try and squeeze by on the low side as the white flag waved while LaCrosse trying to go around both the leader and slower car on the high side but got shoved up to the wall with Arneson filling the hole left by LaCrosse. At the finish Mahlik hung on for the win with Arneson edging out LaCrosse for second. Hot Rod Snellenberger and Trent Nolan would complete the top five with only two starters not on the track at the finish.
The Modifieds would compete in fourteen heat races(each driver ran twice) with combined passing points setting the lineups for the Thursday night finale. As a rule, the races went smoothly with few yellows and even fewer crashes as there were only two cars that had to scratch out of their second go around heat. The track was showing a lot of rubber despite the efforts of the prep crew to keep moisture in it as the heat and low humidity and lack of rain in this area is showing on a track that typically is very smooth and slick to begin with and not a track to have much of a berm no matter what the circumstances.
Each position was hard to gain and fought very hard over with local driver Josh Long being the high point accumulator for the two heats. To give an example of how hard it was to move much, he garnered the highest point total with runs of fourth to second and seventh to third in his two heats. Normally they would not be outstanding enough to gain such a lofty award but on this night they were good enough. LaCrosse made up for his disappointment in the Stock Car run by garnering second in overall points with local drivers doing very well. Others from the area that made the top ten included Shawn Kilgore, Lucas Lamberies, Johnny Whitman and Mike Mullen. The "invaders" to make the top ten were Jeremy Thorton, Cody Laney, Ethan Dotson and Kyle Brown. Everyone else in the seventy five car field must fight their way into the show on Thursday night during a Last Chance race.
The crowd was solid on this night and they saw almost nonstop racing from just before 6:30 pm to just before 10:30 pm as the racing beat the "hard curfew" that 141 has to contend with.
One thing I applaud 141 for is for running their biggest races as midweek special events, rather than insisting as way too many tracks do no that specials must be run on weekends and that they can't draw a crowd for a midweek special. But real promoters prove that idea wrong time after time and this way it allows drivers from far and near to race if they please and still not have to give up their home tracks and either leave them in a lurch for a week or instead miss a special event by racing for track points and the local sponsors. More tracks need to get back to the way it used to be and that was for specials to be truly special and that was by running them on nights when no one else was racing, not on weekends where they either have to "pirate" drivers away from their home tracks or run a "special" that is not so special after all.
Outstanding job by drivers and track crew.
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