Round five of the Wild West Shootout was held on Saturday, January 13th at the F K Rod Ends Vado Speedway Park in Vado New Mexico. Gary Christian would break into victory lane for the first time as the Modified feature winner while familiar faces would also get to shoot off the six shooters in victory lane as Bobby Pierce and Nick Rivera would also be feature winners.
Saturday provided the first semblance that the weather could be tolerable in New Mexico in January after a week of brutally cold temperatures and a never ending wind. The temperature finally rose to a nicer level on Saturday and while the winds still howled during the afternoon, once the sun set(and it was a gorgeous sunset), the winds also went down but the temperature didn't drop at the rapid rate it has all week. The sum result was that it was the comfortable night for racing so far in 2024 and the response was by far the biggest crowd of the week. The fact that it was Saturday probably didn't hurt either.
One hundred and fifty one cars signed in to race in the three divisions with only the Modifieds slipping back a couple entries from Friday night's show. And even though they had exactly the same number of entries as on Friday, today the X Mods were granted one more heat race which made the numbers for those heats a little more manageable and fair to the drivers. Perhaps X Mod drivers complaints were finally held or maybe track officials just examined things and decided this would be a better way to go, but I was glad in the interest of fairness that they split things up a little more evenly and that extra heat race took only a few more minutes to run.
Otherwise, the program would be a duplicate in form to what had been the format for the other shows in this series. The Late Models and X Mods would get a few more laps for their feature than they have had for the week night shows and for the third time this week, the Pro Power Dash was held for the Late Models.
Bill Schliepper is getting a lot of publicity while spending no dollars so far this week. For the third time, the Late Model Dash winner chose to fore go the grand as the winner of this event and instead opted to run the feature race. Apparently the winners have all felt that the reason they drove all the way to New Mexico was to race, not sit and count their money while watching the main event from the pits. This has been quite the change from previous years when there were always some that chose to take the grand instead of racing. There will be one more Dash on Sunday so we will see it this pattern holds yet again. .
Mike Marlar would be fast qualifier for the Late Model drivers at 14.390 seconds while Shannon Babb would top the other group but neither was able to translate that quick time into a particularly strong feature finish.
A goodly part of Bobby Pierce's success this week has been the tried and true formula that holds for most Late Model specials these days. Qualify well to get a front row starting spot in a heat, win that heat and then draw well for the redraw for the main event. And while even a poor redraw gets you a second row starting spot, Pierce has been doing much better than that. On Saturday, for the fourth time in five races, Bobby would start on the pole while his "poor" redraw night saw him start on the outside pole!
No doubt it makes it much easier to win when starting up front but you still have to beat two dozen other fast teams and Pierce has been able to do that with ease. As has been the case most of this week, Pierce would not necessarily take the early lead and that held once again in Saturday night's forty lapper.
Brandon Sheppard would take the initial lead but Pierce would quickly size him up and then make a second lap pass to take over the top spot. After that, it was a battle for second as Pierce was long gone and would never be challenged. This race would see more yellow flags, five for minus spins and stalls, that would break up the action to the point that even lapped traffic, Pierce's lone worry, wasn't a factor.
The best battle would be for second where Stormy Scott and Sheppard would battle for that position. Stormy would pass Sheppard for second on lap five and hold that spot until the halfway point of the race when Sheppard would get back around him for the runner up slot. After that, the leaders would run in the same order for the remainder of the race.
Kyle Larson put on the best charge of the night, moving from sixteenth to fourth with some hard driving but he has continually buried himself so deep in the fields with poor qualifying efforts that he has not been in a position to challenge for any wins. Cade Dillard would complete the top five in the running order.
Pierce's fourth win would guarantee him a twenty five thousand dollar bonus for winning four feature races during the series with Penske officials, the sponsors of this bonus, now sweating in their socks as another win on Sunday would give the Illinois driver a hundred grand bonus, money worth getting serious about.
Both of the open wheel classes would run green to checkers in their main events, a rarity at any level. The Modified feature would produce a surprise as Gary Christian would take the win after starting on the outside pole and beating Friday night winner Terry Phillips to the first turn. This race would be an odd one in that once everyone started racing, there would be very little change of position throughout the field.
Christian would pull to a nice sized lead and Phillips wasn't able to cut into him margin much. And even though only four cars would fail to finish the race, virtually everyone on the track seemed to be running at the same speed and Christian didn't even have to deal with any lapped cars.
The best battle on the track would be for third where Dan Ebert and Tyler Wolff would trade that spot several times as they raced side by side seemingly for the whole contest. Meanwhile, while some were waiting for the inevitable fade by Christian and the charge to the lead by Phillips, it never happened and Christian would drive on for the win.
Terry was able to close in slightly near the end but never to the point that he could provide any real challenge. Wolff would out fight Ebert for third and another surprise would find Noah Daspit compleing the top five in the running order.
The X Mods would participate in their best feature race on the week and also the best of this night as their nonstop twenty five lapper would see Nick Rivera and J. C. Morton go at it for the lead right down to the final lap.
Rivera would take the early lead from the pole and would set sail on the competition, building nearly a full straightaway lead as the green remained out. Christy Barnett would move into second and hold that spot for several laps before Morton was able to pass her and move into second. It was then a classic race of catch up as Rivera was running the cushion while Morton worked the low groove.
Lap after lap, Morton would gain just a little ground as the top side seemed to be wearing out but Rivera chose to remain up there and by lap fifteen, Morton had caught the leader and the battle was on. Rivera would hold on lap after lap as Morton would try to nose under him and then when the leaders caught traffic, it really got interesting.
A group of four drivers were running hard in a pack and battling and both the leaders were faced with the tough decision of where to go on the track to pass them. Morton was able to nose ahead on lap nineteen for the lead briefly but then Rivera made a great move to split the slower cars, a move that probably saved victory for him.
With Rivera getting away, Morton resorted to slamming his way past a couple cars to get free and he then caught back up to Rivera. The final lap would see Rivera drop low in turn three to protect his advantage with Morton trying to squeeze under him as they ran dangerously close to each other, threatening to take both out.
However, he slammed his way to get there, Morton played it clean on the final corner when he had the chance to bump Rivera out of the way and Rivera was able to fight off the Missouri driver by the smallest of margins to take his second win of the series and become the first repeat winner.
Jesse Haynie, another winner during this week, made a late charge up to third after starting ninth and he was probably quicker than both the leaders at the end of the race but ran out of time. Josh Cain and Barnett would complete the top five. And in this remarkable race, while not only did it go nonstop green to checkers, but all twenty four drivers were still on the track at the finish and that doesn't happen very often.
Track officials have become very adapt at running off a quick program here, likely in part due to the cold weather conditions that the fans on hand have been dealing with and also due to the fact that FLO Racing on tv is a huge part of the overall success of this race and they like to package this event to be completed in around three hours. On Saturday night, the final checkered waved before 9 pm with no one complaining in the least bit for an early completion of the racing. It's hard to believe but the end is already in sight with the finale of the WWS scheduled for Sunday with another early green flag start.
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