Sabraski Continues To Roll; Two More Feature Wins at Topless Nationals

 The racing season in the Minnesota-Wisconsin region concluded on Saturday night, October 23rd with the final night of the Topless Nationals at the Ogilvie Raceway. After running all the heat races on Friday night, the preliminary action would consist of four B Features in the Midwest Mods and one for the Super Stocks before the five feature races would be run. 

For more drivers showed up on Saturday to run at the back of the fields for those classes with room while one lone driver started at the back of a fairly large Super Stock B Feature but hoped to race his way into the main event. Sadly for him, it didn't happen but he was the last of what turned out to be one hundred and seventy six drivers that took to the banking of the "Big O" for one last race in 2021. 

The afternoon was filled with trick or treating by the kids in the pit area and nearly every one of the racers had either candy or pictures(or both) and even guys like me wearing my own natural Halloween mask were offered more candy that I could handle, leading to a sugar high. 

One of the topics for discussion in the pit area was the upcoming Wild West Shootout, simply because there are so many racers from our area that attend and support that event and are actually the ones carrying the load in terms of car and fan support. Without a big turnout of racers and fans from our area, that race would not be what it has become. 

Of course, by now just about everyone knows that the race for 2022 has been moved to the Vado Motorsports Park in Las Cruces New Mexico because Arizona Speedway is being shut down. While Vado is a great racing facility and certain top ten in the entire country, a lot of racers and fans are expressing some hesitancy about the move, simply because for many it is also a vacation with warm weather and oodles of things to do a part of it and some are not just sure they want to go to the high plains of New Mexico in January. 

It is true that New Mexico is about eight or so degrees, on average, cooler than Arizona and that there probably aren't as many touristy kinds of things to do there, but for those coming there for the races, they won't find many tracks anywhere nicer than Vado. I guess we will wait to see just how many make the pull there in January. 

Well known Late Model driver Don Shaw has added a Modified to his stable of cars and Iowa racing fans will recognize that he got the JMR car from Scott Fitzpatrick who is getting the chassis from Jay McDonald in North Dakota and then putting them together. 

Shaw owns a winter home in Arizona that he spends considerable time at and when they aren't racing Late Models out there, he wants to be able to race other cars so he bought an IMCA car since all the Modified racing in the Phoenix area is of the IMCA type. This weekend he converted this car over to WISSOTA with their tires and a big spoiler but left the crate motor in the car. Don told me he was hoping for a slick track on Saturday as while he did OK on Friday, he said he had the car "to the boards" just to try and keep up. Later he would start sixth in the Modified thirty lapper and slip to tenth at the end. 

Racing action would start just after 5 pm to try and beat the cool weather again predicted for Saturday but with the bright sun the track was tough and there were an excruciating twenty one yellow flags in the five B Mains which were painful to watch. Finally they got them done, the sun set, the top qualifiers took to the track for the main events and the racing went much smoother.  

Quite the opposite of the B Features, the five main events were all smoothly run shows with few yellows, lots of side by side racing with two settled right at the finish line and other not much much more in separation. 

Continuing a pattern that he has maintained most of the Summer, Shane Sabraski was again a double winner, taking both the Modified and Super Stock main events. It has been another monster year for the Rice Minnesota driver, with his two wins this weekend putting him right at sixty feature wins for the year between the two classes he races in. He also won yet another WISSOTA national title in the Super Stocks and finishing painfully close in the Modifieds, coming up just two points short of Hickson North Dakota's Tyler Peterson. Sabraski had two shots late in the year where feature wins would have given him the point lead but he came up short in both, finishing second both nights. 

He told be before the show that he was happy to have a weekend where he didn't have to worry about  points and could just race. He also admitted the race where he was passed at this very track on the last corner by Dan Ebert that likely cost him the title will haunt him for quite some time. 

Matt Aukland would lead the first two laps of the Modified main before Sabraski would pass him and after that, it would be Shane to lead the last twenty eight. He was really flying on this night and opened up a full straightaway over the field that was never really challenged. Jody Bellefeuille moved up to second but then he faded and it was Clayton Wagamon who drove up from eleventh and would eventually take the second spot. 

A late yellow would set up a two lap sprint to the finish and Sabraski would fight off the best efforts of Wagamon to pull off the upset. Aukland would finish a solid third as he keeps getting faster and faster since he quit IMCA racing, got himself a new Lethal chassis and has been getting better and better each week. 

A mention should also go out to Jeremy Nelson(4) who ran well on Friday night, only to get DQ'd for his deck height. He started twenty fifth and raced his way up to fourth at the finish. 

The Super Stock feature started  inauspiciously as polesitter Dan Nissalke jumped the start. The starter waved the yellow quickly while the field was still pounding down the front chute. The front half slowed, the back half didn't and a major wreck ensued that eliminated four cars before the green was waved. 

Nissalke was set back a row and the race restarted with Josh Zimpel leading a single lap before Sabraski came up from the second row to take over the lead. Sabraski would lead the rest of the way but that would be slightly misleading. He would build up a big lead in what would turn out to be a nonstop race but lapped traffic was brutal and it bogged Sabraski down some. 

Meanwhile, Nissalke was driving the wheels off his car and he cut a full chute lead to a few car lengths in the last few laps. In fact, twice in the last five laps, Nissalke got beside Shane but Sabraski was able to find his way through traffic just a bit quicker and at the finish he held the slimmest of margins over Nissalke, who if he hadn't lost his pole position because of the jump, might have won the event. Another big winner this year, Dave Mass, would come home third. 

The two biggest nail biters were the Street Stock and Midwest Modified mains. Justin Vogel would start on the pole for the Street race and lead the first twelve laps but Kyle Dykhoff would gradually reel him in and on lap thirteen, Kyle would drive under Vogel and take over the lead. 

However, Vogel would fight back and the last seven laps would see the two drivers, who race each other weekly and more than once a week most times, battle side by side. Dykhoff would run the low side while Vogel, who loved the high side, would work that line. They would jockey back and forth, taking turns leading at the line. 

On the last lap they remained in this fashion but Vogel got a great run off the final corner, squeezed up against the wall and would edge Dykhoff by inches in what was an excellent race between drivers that race each other harder than hard but respect each other too. 

While the leaders fought it out, there was a great battle for third between three drivers that saw Zach Elward roll on the final corner. He was awarded third with another driver sent to the end of the running order but that probably wasn't a great deal of consolation to him. Vogel would conclude the event as he likes to when he wins a big race, parking his car against the home stretch wall and then doing a "burndown" until the whole victory lane is obscured  by tire smoke. 

Ashley Mehrwerth would lead one lap of the Midwest Modified feature before Travis Schulte took over the top spot. He would then have to weather an assault from three different drivers before he could park in victory lane. First it was Mitch Weiss that would challenge and then Brennan Blascyk would try to get by. 

His biggest challenger though would be Cody "The Cobra" Lee who would come from tenth to challenge. Lee, driving a new car that he got near the end of the year. is a hard charger of repute and he used that strategy as he high balled his way up to second and then began to pressure Schulte. Lap after lap, Lee would fling his car into the corners, rolling up to the door of Schulte who would coolly maintain his line while Lee would back off and race him clean. 

They did this right up to the final lap where Lee made one last blast into turn four, but Schulte trusted his instincts and Lee's judgement and Cody left him a lane where Schulte squeezed by to win by a whisper with Blascyk finishing third. 

The Mod Fours would see Bob Holtquist lead the first half of the race before his son Dustin would make a great outside move on his "Old Man" and drive into the lead. Once in front, Bob would keep him close but Dustin would drive on for the win with Jamie Flickinger taking a tight battle to finish third. 

The feature races would go off smoothly and all racing would be done just after 10 pm after which I slipped back to my car where it was a comfortable thirty three degrees on this pleasant Minnesota Fall day. A very nice crowd was on hand for the feature races so along with a jammed pit area, this turned out to be a very good weekend for the track when racing is a gamble this deep into the Fall. 

Thanks to the Wagamon family and promoter Nate Fischer and all his crew for a good final experience of racing for this year. With all racing in this area now complete, any further activity will require considerable driving so we will see what the rest of the season brings. 

Sabraski Shines in Topless Nationals Prelims

 The last racing weekend in the state of Minnesota for the 2021 racing season kicked off on Friday night, October 22nd at the Wagamon's Ogilvie Speedway, home of the Big O near Ogilvie Minnesota. The Big O hosted the eleventh annual Topless Nationals with five classes in racing action on this night. 

An open competition show, the five classes racing were the Street Stocks, Mod Fours, Midwest Modifieds, Super Stocks and Modifieds. Since the Big O is WISSOTA sanctioned, three of the classes were those that are unique to WISSOTA while two of the open wheel classes allowed the basic rules of whatever sanctioning body the car raced under.

So we had the Street Stocks(although one Stock Car managed to sneak in and I don't know how that happened), Mod Fours and Super Stocks running WISSOTA rules while the Midwest Mods had IMCA and USRA cars running under their own rules as well as IMCA and USRA Modifieds running under their own rules. 

This all made for an interesting mix of drivers and certainly many that don't get a chance to race at Ogilvie any other time during the season. And one would think that a lot of racers have had enough by this time of the year, particularly on what was predicted to be a sunny but very brisk forecast for the weekend with the first killing frosts of this growing season just happening the night before this race with that type of weather expected throughout the weekend. 

However, for a race that is always very hard to predict just what the car counts will be, the pit area was jammed with race cars with the overflow field behind the back chute even being utilized as one hundred and seventy two cars signed in to race in just five divisions including a whopping seventy eight Midwest Mods. 

And to prove that there were still plenty of drivers anxious to race, drivers were on hand from five states and two Canadian Provinces to wrap up their 2021 racing seasons. 

And the one common denominator that all cars had, no matter what class they were in was that all ran without roofs for this weekend. Some had apparently prepared weeks ahead for this race as many of the bare roll cages were cleverly decorated as a "Best Appearing" is a part of this event. Everything from blinking lights to pumpkins, skulls and whole skeletons were riding along with some of the drivers in a once a year appearance while some of the teams were still frantically removing the roofs of their cars after arriving at the track. 

This whole event is a fund raiser for the Hope Chest for Breast Cancer and Susan G. Komen Foundation research via Angie's Army and while the wall surrounding the track wasn't painted pink as in some years past, there were pink ribbons everywhere and kid's trick or treating including the pit area, Halloween costume contests for kids and adults alike, live music and dancing after the races on Friday night and a myriad of other things going on to celebrate the last race of the year. 

Friday night would feature heat races only for all divisions with B Features, as needed, along with all the main events on Saturday night. There would be twenty heat races of ten laps apiece contested on Friday night using the draw/redraw format so it was important to draw a good number of a "soft" heat, or perhaps both. Finding the "soft" heats was a challenge so an up front starting position would be important. 

While eight of the nine Midwest Mod heats were won right off the front row, it was not because the track was unpassable but more that some really strong cars started up front. Chris VanMil was an exception as he came from the fourth row to win his heat race. Josh Mattick would win a heat in his first appearance of the year here and rookie driver Jake Hagemann would also top a heat and North Dakota driver Jarret Carter would come from the back row of his heat to make the main. 

Kegan Stueve would have perhaps his best run ever as he came from the fourth row to win a Street Stock feature while northwestern Minnesota aces Justin Vogel and Kyle Dykhoff would also take wins. 

Eric Lamm, Shane Sabraski and Matt Aukland would win Modified heats and Sabraski would back that win with another in his Super Stock, being the only double winner of the night. Dave Mass, Dan Nissalke and rim riding Josh Zimpel would be other Super Stock winners. The Mod Four field has been depleted by this time of the year and their lone heat saw South Dakota's Bob Holtquist top son Dustin in that race. 

B Features will be required for the Midwest Mods and Super Stocks before the main events proceed on Saturday with an early start time to try and beat the worst of the cool weather. 

Track officials at Ogilvie ran off another  efficient program as they have been doing for all their Fall specials this year with all racing being completed in under three hours with the final checkered flag waving just after 10 pm. The temperature indicator in my vehicle said it was thirty three degrees when I started it up so it was indeed a cool Autumn night. The pit area was jammed with onlookers and while the main grandstand was a bit light on Friday, many more people are expected to be on hand for the main events on Saturday. The dance was well under way by the time I cut through the main building on my way to the parking lot so those on hand were having a good time, cool weather or not. 

Nate Fischer and his crew produced another good racing surface for the drivers with plenty of side by side racing and not a whisper of dust. 

Angst Tops Five Star Classic

 The Mason City Motor Speedway wrapped up their 2021 racing season on Sunday afternoon, October 17th with the concluding race of the Five Star Classic which featured the six classes that routinely race at Mason City, the USRA sanctioned Modifieds, B Mods, Stock Cars, Hobby Stocks and Tuners plus the Mini Mods which also race quite often at this track. 

Originally scheduled to be a Friday night, Saturday night doubleheader, those plans had to be changed due to the fact that the special part that the electricians are waiting on to get the new lightning system up and running still hasn't arrived on the boat from somewhere and so the lightning system still doesn't function. Therefore, Todd, Ryne and the folks from Webster City opted to run a Saturday and Sunday afternoon doubleheader which gave me the chance to drive down on Sunday and catch the Sunday portion of the show with Sunday races being rare indeed this time of year. 

Normally an afternoon race, no matter the time of the year, would send up warning signs threatening dust, rubbered up racing conditions and an overall poor experience but as we would all find out later that day, none of these proved to be the case on this Sunday and instead we had the pleasure of watching a good racing program and enjoying sitting out in some beautiful Fall weather conditions. 

I waited until the last race of the year to make my first visit to the Mason City Motor Speedway this year but I should probably qualify that statement by saying that this is my first visit to the Mason City Motor Speedway times two. 

The reason that I say this is that last year, when Mason City reopened after having been cut down from a big half mile to the third mile track that it now is, Todd, Ryne and the folks that run the show here just weren't totally happy with what they had created. I was here once last year and thought the racing was not bad but there was indeed something about the corners that just didn't sit quite right. 

At least that's how they felt so they totally ripped up the corners and started over with that newest track being debuted again this Summer. It still is a work in progress as was mentioned above, the lightning still doesn't work, the pits are still plenty rough off corner three and there is plenty of landscaping yet to be done, and I can't provide a complete analysis of the track until I see some racing under the lights, but from what I did see today, it looks to me like they definitely got it right this time.  

In fact, the show on Sunday was a very good one and almost hard to believe that it was daytime racing as there was next to no dust, the track was wide, racy and fast and they didn't really have to spend an inordinate amount of time between races to keep it that way. Being as they didn't have any lights, they had to get done by a certain time anywhere or race in the dark but that was never a danger either. 

Here is an interesting story about one of the competitors in the Mini Mod class. Levi Randt is I believe eleven years old. On Saturday night, I saw the Randt racing team in action at the Gondik Law Speedway in Superior Wisconsin with older son Landyn (age fourteen) racing his WISSOTA Mod Four. The Mod Four is a smaller version of a Modified with a four cylinder engine in it and is a popular class at certain tracks in Minnesota and a long sanctioned class in WISSOTA. Landyn is a rookie in the class after racing Mini Mods previously. They raced on Saturday night, (Landyn finished sixth),  then pulled the seventy two miles home to their house in Siren Wisconsin. They swapped cars and then drove the two hundred and eighty seven miles to Mason City so that Levi could race on Sunday afternoon in Mason City where he finished third. 

They have been doing this all Summer, trading off so that both Landyn and Levi get to race with most of Landyn's shows being fairly close by to them in Minnesota while they have had to pull the Mini Mod all over neighboring states to race. But they have done it sixty times this Summer. 

But they will do it one more time this coming week and get this. On Friday night at the last race in the state of Minnesota for 2021, Levi will qualify the Mod Four on Friday night as Landyn has a football game. Despite being just a scrawny Freshman in high school, he is a two way starter on the Siren nine man football team and they start state playoffs on Friday night against the Shell Lake Lakers. Levi, just eleven, will qualify the car on Friday and Landyn will drive it on Saturday night after having hopefully celebrated a football playoff victory. After that, I believe Dad is ready to call it a season.  

Just over eighty cars were on hand in the five classes that were racing on this Sunday plus the Mini Mods. The field was a mixture of USRA cars that race in Iowa and southern Minnesota along with some area and local drivers that run with IMCA also. Cars ran their own sanctioning body rules and the Mods were allowed to put on a big spoiler if they normally didn't do so. 

 No B Features were required and the eleven qualifying heats, of which only two required yellow flag slowdowns, went by really quick so even with a thirty minute late start due to some last minute track prep on this warm and sunny Sunday and a bit of an equipment failure that slowed things down briefly, the feature races were ready to roll early on. 

The Modified feature, as you might expect, was the highest paying race of the day and young Jayden Larson, who seems to have cars to fit every sanctioning bodies rules, would be the early leader. He had Josh Angst close behind and when he jumped the cushion, Angst slipped by him to take over the lead. Larson caught a quarter panel as Rodney Sanders made a pass on him that wouldn't qualify for the Hall of Fame of clean passes, but the race was then on between Angst and the former USMTS champion. 

Angst refused to yield and no matter what Sanders tried, he couldn't quite catch Angst. He tried to set him up for a late race slider but Angst was just too hard to catch and Josh would drive on for the win. Dustin Sorensen, current USRA national point leader and winner on Saturday, would climb from eighth to finish third ahead of Larson. 

Rookie Brady Link would lead the first half of the Stock Car feature with Calvin Lange and Bill Crimmins chasing him. They were running tightly together with Lange continually trying to sneak under Link for the lead. However, it would be Crimmins that would show the field the fast lane as he moved up the banking and drove past both Lange and Link to take over the lead just past the halfway point. 

After that Link also moved up the banking and stayed tight on Crimmins' rear bumper. A late yellow set a two lap sprint to the finish but the veteran Crimmins would hold off the upset attempt of Link to get the win with Lange and Travis Shipman following. 

The B Mods would start the biggest field with twenty one taking the green flag and Ty Griffith the early leader. A good battle would see George Nordman and Josh Appel putting pressure on him while Ben Moudry would work his way forward after starting sixth and would eventually take over second. 

A long green flag period would see Griffith start to struggle in the corners as his car wanted to slide high as by this time the groove had moved back from the top to the low line. Moudry would drive under him and take over the lead as Griffith would continue to slip back in the field. Again in this race, a late yellow would set up another two lap sprint to the finish but Moudry had his line nailed and while Brandon Maitland would close as he went back to the top, Moudry would take the double checkers as the winner. Nordman would finish third. 

Dylan Clinton would attempt to be a weekend double winner in the Hobby Stocks as he would lead the first half of that main with Carter Koop and Dustin Gulbranson close behind. Eventually the speed of the current national point leader would take over and Gulbranson would drive under both to take the point and once in front, there was no dislodging him as he would drive on for the win. Koop made a late charge on the top side but settled for second over Clinton. 

The Tuner feature, after a first lap yellow for a collision, would go nonstop from green to checkered. Max Heimbuch would take the early lead over over his team mate Devin Jones with Jaeden Erickson tight behind them. There was much bumper to bumper to bumper racing among the top three with Erickson somehow squeezing between the team mates to grab second. Heimbuch would be slow off the corners before he gained speed and there would be much Talladega style bumper tag down the chutes with the starter at one point threatening the black flag as things got quite physical. 

Erickson got shuffled back to third and that is how they crossed the finish line with Heimbuch holding off Jones and Erickson for the win. 

The new track is both nice and wide and really high banked and the cars really do fly around this oval. They were very fast for this day race so I can't imagine just how quick they will be when they go under the cover of darkness. There was much side by side hard racing for this afternoon show and as I said, a very good one for a day race. With the shortened size of the track, the whole of the grandstand is now excellent seating where when it was the big half mile, the overhanging VIP porch made a whole portion of the grandstands worthless to sit in so I would say that everything about the new track is a positive and with some laps and some minor refinements, this should be one of the better, fastest and most exciting places to watch racing in the whole state. 

Thanks to Todd(who held up to his nickname by hammering another wall with his Stock Car in the main), Ryne, Janet and the other track officials for a good concluding show to the season which allowed me to be on the road home before 6 pm.