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.
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