McCreadie Overcomes for 40 K Kokomo Clash Win

 Round number two of the Kokomo Clash was held on Tuesday night, September 20th at the Kokomo Speedway in Indiana. An identical program to Monday night's would be held for the two classes involved, the XR Late Models and the UMP Modifieds. The notable difference would that for an extra twenty laps of racing, the purse for the winner would be doubled to forty thousand dollars! Mods would again be racing for fifteen hundred dollars to win but for some of the top Modified entrants, the UMP points were just as important to them as the cash was. 

Right off the top, I must make a correction from Monday night as I made an assumption that proved to be in error. Relative to the Modified class and their procedures, since they posted hot lap times, I assumed these were timed hot laps that would line up the heat races which would then be followed by heats using passing points to establish the starting lineup for the feature. 

It turns out that the hot laps were just that, hot laps and the times posted were immaterial. It turns out that  according to Event Director Bucky Doren, the drivers knew ahead of time that this would be a straight passing points show which explained to me why the lineups for Monday didn't seem to quite match up with the posted hot lap times. At least I got the passing points part right! And that would be the same procedure used on Tuesday. 

How the face of Late Model racing has changed in the last twelve to eighteen months. Not very long ago, who would have thought they we could be watching over forty of the top Late Model drivers in the country, racing on a Monday and Tuesday night in the middle of September  at a quarter mile Sprint Car track in the heart of Indiana for top prizes of twenty and forty thousand dollars and a total purse of over a quarter of a million dollars! Frankly, it just blows my mind. And certainly XR has been at the forefront of this monumental change in the world of dirt track racing for Late Models. 

It has been an unexpectedly hot couple of days here in Indiana with temps over 90 degrees and lots of humidity, making it as uncomfortable as the even the most extreme days of Summer. It appeared that the track crew put a little more water on the track than they had on Monday but eventually the heat and strong wind would make things pretty miserable for those fans sitting in the main grandstand on the East side of the track. It was one of the dirtier nights experienced this year but it did not affect the racing in any way. 

After Monday night's show got started quite a bit late and ran later than hoped for, XR officials got on the phone and called the "bullpen" and and overnight trip from central Iowa brought Mike VanGenderen in to function at Race Director on Tuesday night. he was brought in help get the show started on time, move it along better and wrap things up earlier. His imprint was easy to spot as among other things, changes saw the Late Models time three at a time and also eliminate the extra time trial lap as they came out of the pits at full song and took the green immediately. MVG would later proudly point out that all heat races in both classes were done at the same time the first heat took to the  track on Monday!

Fields of cars were very comparable to Monday night with three less Late Models and five less Modifieds. Interestingly, there was only one new car in either class and that was a Modified driver that went home and swapped cars. 

The track was lightning fast for time trials with the third car out, last night's winner Shane Clanton hammering the wall which then required some quick pit work to get him ready for his heat. Right behind him, Jonathan Davenport would break the track record for Late Models with a quick blast at 13.398 seconds. They would run just four heats in each class and two B Features with an adjusted number of cars coming out of the heats into the mains. 

After writing him off as a no show following motor problems last night, Bobby Pierce was a surprise entrant when he returned on Tuesday and he would time well and run a strong second in his heat. 

Late Models would go first for their sixty lap main and it was Davenport that took the early lead over Brandon Overton. However, Overton couldn't keep up on this night as he quickly dropped back in the pack and would finish out of the top ten. Pierce would have trouble even getting his car to run and would drop to the back of the pack and then pull off almost immediately with smoke trailing from the car again. 

Davenport was in control as he built up a good sized lead over the field. There were two minor yellows in the first eighteen laps and then they would run green the rest of the way.  McCreadie would start to assert  himself as he raced into second while it was fun to watch Ricky Thornton Jr. thump the wall on lap after lap as he was one of the few running the top side of the track. He was able to race to third and then he seemed to be moving up after the top two. 

Davenport still held a comfortable lead with thirty laps to go when things started to change noticeably Davenport began to slow down and McCreadie started to pick up the pace. It would be a two car duel as Thornton Jr couldn't match their pace. 

Davenport hit a swarm of about six slower cars, running three wide on at least a couple of occasions. It was clear that Davenport was having trouble driving around them on the outside and his lead really started to shrink. McCreadie got closer and started to show himself to Davenport, running the middle of the track. 

Apparently Davenport felt that he must move up the track to try and get by the slower cars and as soon as he did that, McCreadie jumped him, dove low and drove into the lead. At the end, McCreadie was pulling away as Davenport couldn't make the higher lane work and that was his only alternative since McCreadie had driven away on the low side. 

For the crowd, it was a popular win with McCreadie visiting victory lane for the first time in quite a while. Point leader of the XR Series, Chris Madden, seemed stuck in the middle of the pack until the last twenty laps or so when he suddenly took off like a rocket and passed Thornton Jr right at the end for third. Twenty for cars started the race and only four weren't around at the finish with only four that were lapped as everyone ran very competitively over the last forty two nonstop ;laps. 

As they had on Monday, the Modifieds would wrap up the evening and it would prove to be another run away win for Tyler Nicely. He would start on the outside pole and lead every lap and was never challenged, despite the fact that six yellows for a variety of spins and slowing cars would give those behind him a shot to overtake him. There was an excellent battle for second though, with Thornton Jr and Dillon Nusbaum going back and forth for the runner up position. Thornton Jr would get the jump on several occasions but each time Nusbaum would track him down and make the pass. The race ended on a crazy note with a multi car collision in turn four after the white had been waved so the finishing order had to be established post checkered. There were only two cars that didn't finish this event, despite the yellows. 

Racing was done considerably earlier than the previous night and everyone seemed happy with the results. XR officials seemed happy and the fans on hand clearly enjoyed themselves. Surprisingly, there were lots of people in the stands sporting Sprint Car shirts even as the Late Models headlined. Old habits are hard to break!

The Kokomo Speedway proved to be different than what I expected. My vision was to see racing on a very heavy track with a huge berm and much wall banging going on. It proved to be nothing like that and it would be interesting to see if they prep the track like this for the Sprints. However, that's not to say that the racing wasn't good though, by any means. We saw plenty of good hard side by side racing throughout the pack and still saw our share of wall bangers too. 

Thanks to Barry Braun, Brandon Brown, Bucky and all the employees of XR and the Kokomo Speedway for their help. XR will conclude their season with five more nights of racing split between three at the Dirt Track at Las Vegas Motor Speedway in November and All-Tech Speedway in Florida in December. 

Clanton Slides To Kokomo Win Over Tyler Erb

 The first annual Kokomo Dirt Nationals, part of the XR Series schedule, kicked off on Monday night, September 19th at the Kokomo Speedway in Indiana. Billed as the "Baddest Bullring" in the state of Indiana, the Kokomo Speedway is quite an historic race track and is often thought off as the home for Sprint Cars without wings in this state. And while they have a couple shows each year featuring Late Models, this would likely be the biggest racing events ever held here for Late Models. This race was a late addition on the schedule, replacing the Texas races after the decision was made to shut down that track for 2022 and put a completely new surface on it. Barry Braun and the XR folks found this track, which was a most fortunate thing, because we would eventually get to see a most entertaining evening of racing on what they generously call a quarter mile track. 

I guess that since this race was replacing an event in Texas, they decided to supply Texas like weather as the temperature was in the high eighties and with humidity to match, it was a most warm mid September day in west central Indiana and highly unexpected by me. However, it was good to get back to a no coat night after having a little cool weather to deal with earlier this weekend in Minnesota. 

It's been a few generations since I was last at Kokomo and while I remembered the basic layout of the place, many of the details had slipped my memory over the years. I expected this place to be one with ankle deep mud and the race cars hammering off a deep cushion and the wall and while there was plenty of wall banging, the place didn't race quite like I'd expected. However, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing either, as they set it up to be black and slick but it was such that several grooves were still available. The track is not banked as much as I remembered but it is extraordinarily wide and for that reason drivers are able to keep up their speeds, even though there isn't a huge amount of banking to work off of. 

The old original grandstand is on the front chute with a new, very high rise aluminum grandstand on the back chute that spectators can drive around back and sit in along with the race crews. Either sides provide excellent viewing although the front stretch stand faces West and much like say 34 Raceways or Princeton Speedway in Minnesota , the sun is a factor until it goes down, which, unfortunately, gets earlier and earlier every night. 

Since the O'Connor family bought the track, there have been many upgrades to concessions, lighting, restrooms and sound system etc., and it is a very nice facility. Do watch out for the old wooden boards on the front chute though, as quite a few of them are "punky" and bow like a banana. Overall, a very nice facility. They were having "gremlins" with the p.a. system on this night, early on, and some of the spectators on hand sure didn't cut them much slack with finally one of the local track officials, who apparently knew the most of the outspoken crew complaining, went down and told him to knock it off as they were working on the problem. That pretty much shut him up which was a positive for the rest of the crowd. 

Just two classes would be racing this XR Series event, with the Super Late Models joined by the UMP Modifieds. Both classes were very well represented with forty two cars apiece in each class. The Modified field had a couple of "ringers" as Ricky Thornton Jr ran in both classes while Silver Crown star Tyler Roahrig also drove a Mod on this night. 

The Late Model class had many of the top driving talents in the country on hand with seven of their top ten in current points on hand plus many other great Late Model racers. I was as tough a field as you will probably see all year. And they were racing for some major money with over a quarter of a million dollars on the line this week with twenty thousand dollars to the winner of tonight's forty lapper alone. It was not very long ago that racing on a Monday and Tuesday night in September for such large amounts of money would be unthinkable but people like Barry Braun have changed the face of Late Model racing and the new norm is certainly very much unlike what we were used to only perhaps just a year of so ago. 

The program would be identical for both classes with both qualifying against the clock, followed by six heats, two B Features and a main event for both. Because the pay per view is so important for this series, the Late Models would go first in the running order but at the end of the night, I noted that most folks stuck around to watch the Modifieds too. 

Things kind of got off to a rocky start but I'm glad to report that they smoothed things out as the evenin progressed and I expect the whole show to operate as smoothly as things eventually did on Monday, dome Tuesday's show. 

Besides the maddening p.a. issues, the scoreboard wasn't showing the time trials so only those monitoring on line knew who was quick. Instead of qualifying at 7 p.m like posted, that's when the first cars hit the track and it took some time to roll in the track and then of course, the Late Models had to have extensive hot lap sessions, after which they returned for time trials. The Modifieds had hot laps/qualifying(they always qualify UMP Mods) and then the Late Models returned to qualify but because of the smaller track I assume, they only did cars in pairs of two, no larger. So instead of seeing racing at 7 p.m as advertised, the first Late Model heat didn't hit the track until 8:50 pm. Yikes. 

However, once they got rolling, the program moved along very fast and I give them credit for really moving things along and ultimately, the final checkered waved at 11:30 p.m., late yes for a Monday night but still much earlier than it could have been, given their rocky start. Brandon Overton was quickest overall at 13,530 seconds and Derek topped the Mods at 14,453. 

However, while the Late Models lined straight up for their heats and then lined up the feature based on heat race finishes, the Modifieds lined straight up but then qualified for the feature based on passing points, something that I didn't think UMP cars ever did. 

The racing was remarkably clean on this night, despite the fact that many of the Late Model drivers had never seen this track before and it is tight, quarter mile racing which on occasion, can produce plenty of contact. There were three instances of Late Models getting "dumped" by other competitors during the heat race action but in this game, you just race on and "chat" it out later as cars stopped go to the back, even if they were spun. 

A big surprise was the failure of Bobby Pierce, a big crowd favorite here so close to his home area. After his troubles at Knoxville on Sunday, he was the last car to arrive today and they had a different car then they had run the previous day. However, during hot laps a puff of smoke came from the car, Pierce dove into the infield and then took a push off the track. He would never reappear and soon the transporter would leave the pits, along with the souvenir trailer, an indication that he won't be back on Tuesday as they may be out of motors 

In the theme of the night, the two main events were very smooth races with a total of seventy laps of racing that was stopped only once by a yellow flag, and that was when Brian Shirley got a flat tire! That would be the only Late Model slowdown while the Mods would go thirty without a yellow which is almost unheard of. 

 Brandon Overton would take the early lead from the pole but it would only take Shane Chanton six laps to roar past him on the outside. Many of the drivers were running a low groove but those that moved up the track and gave it time found success up there. Tyler Erb would move into contention with him getting past Clanton on lap thirteen. Then the best racing of the evening broke out as Clanton got up on the wheel and fought back. 

There were some great but clean slide jobs thrown by both drivers as they battled for the lead while at the same time Overton started to drop back with Jimmy Owens, Jonathan Davenport and Tim McCreadie battling for position. This was all done smoothly and cleanly and made for great racing. 

Finally, Clanton reestablished his strength as he pulled away from Erb and with no more yellows to bunch things up, he would drive on for the win over Erb and Owens. An impressive run was made by Brandon Sheppard, driving the family car this week as he came from sixteenth to finish fourth, using both the cushion and low side of the track as necessary with Davenport completing the top five. 

Tyler Nicely completely dominated the Modified feature, leading from start to finish and never being challenged by anyone. He pulled away from Jamie Lomax immediately and proceeded to walk away from everyone. With no yellows to give anyone a chance to catch him, his drive was one of complete domination. At the finish, there were only ten cars on the lead lap with four lapped cars and nearly a half lap break between himself and second place finisher David Stremme. The best job of moving up was done by Thornton Jr who started fifteenth and charged up to fourth at the finish. 

The racing was good by both classes all night, even giving the domination of Nicely in the Mods. There was plenty of side by side racing and drivers using all the track and if not for the late start, it might have been one of the smoothest shows of the year. I am confident that these issues won't reappear again on Tuesday. This show had a definite Iowa touch to it as Bucky Doren is operating at the director of the event and the announcer is Iowa's "Big Boy", who we finally started to hear about half way through the proceedings.