It was a rare week night race near the end of September as the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway hosted the Hoker Trucking SLMR East Series on Thursday night, September 23rd as the fast third mile at the Fairgrounds in Dubuque. Thursday night would be the first of three straight nights of SLMR racing in eastern Iowa, topped by the Iowa Governor's Cup event on Saturday night at the Davenport Speedway.
Along with the Late Models there would be racing in three IMCA divisions, the Modifieds, Sport Mods and Hobby Stocks. The Nostalgia Late Models and Jalopies would also be racing on this night and if you were like me, your first thought was that was too many divisions for a Thursday night program with work and school awaiting on Friday am. However, the folks at DRT TRAK Promotions, under the direction of Bob Wegener, knew what they were doing and they produced a very fast paced program that got us all on the road early for those that had to get up early or otherwise had a four and a half hour drive home.
This would be the first appearance of the SLMR East at Dubuque this year and the first promotion of DRT TRAK Promotions at Dubuque also this year. They would also be in charge of the following two nights of racing. Steve Kosiski was on hand to run things for the SLMR and Wegener's top notch crew took care of the other five classes.
Thirty Late Models were on hand to perform on this evening, a fine turnout that saw twelve of the top fourteen in East points on hand for the show missing. Surprisingly missing was second in points Todd Cooney who was only twenty two points behind point leader Justin Kay coming into Thursday night's show. No explanation was given for his absence but the other driver missing, Jeff Aikey, was racing his Modified at the big show in Batesville Arkansas this week. Replacing Aikey on this night was Hall of Famer Ray Guss Jr who was also driving a Nostalgia Late Model for Keith Simmons.
Guss did struggle with the Late Model, not making the show but as "Raymie" explained in victory lane after he won the Nostalgia feature, he hadn't been in a Late Model since 2016 and the cars have changed quite a bit and with just a few practice laps, it was asking a lot of him to jump right in and whip some pretty good competition.
Also appearing as a replacement driver on this night would be Chad Simpson who was driving the car normally driven by Wisconsin's David Webster. Simpson was having a good top ten finish until he got dumped by another driver and only eleven laps left and ended up near the tail of the field.
Before the show, I ran into an interesting gentleman in the pits. Galen Muller is from Monticello and along with Tom Muller, they run the big Rod and Custom show in Monticello every year in February. He is very much interested in all forms of racing and was on hand to check out the Late Models. He would like to have a Late Model as a part of his Rod and Custom Car Show to be held on Feb. 26 and 27, 2022 at the Berndes Center in Monticello so if their is any Dubuque area Late Model driver that would like to put their car on display and get some great advertising for their sponsors, contact Muller.
I also ran into award winning photographer Mike Ruefer in the pits also. He was able to get back from his work assignment early this week and was able to drive up to Dubuque from Davenport where he lives. He tells me that his retirement, planned for this December, is still on track and with no work and travel to worry about starting next year, one can only image how many races he will cover next year which is great news to all the race fans he entertains with his crack photography.
I also had the chance to talk to promoter Bob Wegener briefly before the show and it is always a pleasure to cover races put on by his group as they understand that a quick show is a good show and they crank off the program with the best of them which is particularly important on a week night. Later, a good crowd would be on hand to see the first green flag of the night wave.
Shane Davis, voice of the Davenport Speedway and East Moline Speedway, would be calling the action on this night, and the Nostalgia Late Model would give him ample opportunity to fill in many of the fans on the history of racing in the state of Iowa. I only had wished that I had my latest issue of Speedway Illustrated magazine with me that had a great interview with Ed Sanger as the Hall of Famer and most successful Late Model racer of my generation was sitting two rows in front of me in the grandstand, as he frequently does for races at Dubuque.
Jeff Tharp has one of the more interesting sponsors in the sport on his car as his Late Model is sponsored by the Tri State Cremation Center! No sure how much business his sponsorship generates among the racing crowd but Jeff told me he is also a family friend.
Four heats and a pair of B Features would set the field for the Late Model thirty lap main event. SLMR uses and interesting variety of formats to set their race lineups. They time trial the cars, then invert six for their heat races and then take the top sixteen in passing points for the main with the rest going into B Features. I'm not sure why they would both qualify and then use passing points as one seems to defeat the purpose of the other. I never am a fan of time trials but they did run them off very quickly and for once, the extra laps didn't seem to hurt the racing surface which was in excellent shape all night and promotes lots of side by side racing from start to finish.
Tyler Bruening was home on break from the World of Outlaws Late Model tour and he would dominate the later half of the feature to get the win after having a good dog fight early on with Andy Eckrich. Erkrich would lead the first four laps of the race before Bruening would pass him on the high side and then a classic side by side battle, Eckrich low and Bruening pounding the cushion would last through lap sixteen with them exchanging the lead three times before Bruening would claim it for good.
Luke Goedert seemed to be a real challenger but he would be the victim twice on restarts that would hamper his charge. Following a lap seventeen spin, on the restart Goedert seemed to have a good run on the leader until he got squeezed up into the wall and lost time and two laps later, on the only other restart of the race, he would get wacked again on the green and have to regroup with him still finishing fifth. This was the restart triggered when Simpson got dumped in turn one by heavy traffic.
Bruening would experiment with the low side briefly but his car worked better on the cushion and with the final eleven laps green to checkered, he would get his momentum going and would pull away for the win. Eckrich would run a strong second and Spencer Diercks would come from eighth to finish third. Jason Rauen would get up to second for a bit but then he would fade back to finish behind Diercks with Goedert holding on to complete the top five.
The support classes had just the right number of cars for their classes, just as DRT TRAK had predicted as they had a couple of heats and their main events. Their classes didn't exactly provide a great deal of drama as all three were runaways with two of them going smoothly and the third a debacle.
The Hobby Stocks would go green to checkered and after an early battle that saw Jimmy Doescher and Kodey Miles exchange the lead on the opening two laps, Doeschner would buckle down, take the top spot and proceed to run away from the field for a dominating win. He would finish far ahead of Miles with Scott Wetter third.
The Modified feature would produce an even more dominating run as after Tyler Madigan would lead the first four laps, Matt Gansen would get up on the banking and blast into the lead and once in front, he was gone. The last seventeen laps of this race would go nonstop and Gansen would dominate with his only trouble be in fighting through all the lapped traffic he would come up on.
He had three lapped cars between himself and Madigan when the checkered flew as he had the better half of a full straightaway over the field. Mike Burbridge would best Bill Roberts Jr and Mark Schulte in a good battle for third.
The Sport Mods had one of those nights where they all couldn't get their act together and it seemed like they took turns spinning out, maddening to the crowd and also the track officials. Tony Olson had started on the pole and had a big lead anyway as it seemed that no one would touch him for the win but it would have been nice to see a few more green flag laps strung together.
The only driver that seemed a threat, Tyler Soppe, did a good job moving up from the eleventh starting spot into second as he used every one of the copious number of yellows to gain positions.
Finally they put out the word that the next yellow would end the race and they couldn't even make it to turn one before a couple more cars turned turtle and the checkered flag flew. Olson was ruled the winner over Soppe and Kyle Hoffmann as they did get around eleven laps in before the track officials stuck a fork in the proceedings.
With the Jalopies yet to run and it being an early evening, I did a rare early exit with the long highway home awaiting me. With the road pretty much to myself except for a couple "loonies", I rolled into my driveway at 1:59 am.
Thanks to Bob Wegener, Carrie and all the staff at DRT TRAK Promotions for an excellent night of racing and as we all know, midweek shows are just a special bonus at this time of the year. Hopefully I will be back in the Hawkeye State a time or two more before the snows fly.
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