Night number two of the East Bay Winternationals for the UMP Modifieds took place on Tuesday night, January 30th at the East Bay Raceway Park in Barberton Florida. Just like on Monday night, the program would consist of four at a time qualifying and then the field would be split into three groups which each getting to run just a twenty five lap feature event. Opinions varied depending who you talked to on whether the new format was a good or bad idea and even the drivers seemed split on the decision, but the only opinion that really mattered was that of race promoter and track owner Al Varnadore and he wanted to use the same system at least one more night.
In visiting with him, his thought on going to this form of a race program was two fold. One was to allow everyone to run a feature race each night, as perhaps in the last year of this track's history Al wanted every driver to be able to say that they had run a feature at East Bay.
His second thought was by going to a feature races only format it would make for a faster program during the week, but that didn't happen due to the multitude of yellow flags that would fly after a tricky track and over aggressive driving mixed together to provide a colossus of chaos. Several UMP officials have spoken to him about a change but he had already decided to give the current format one more try so that is what Tuesday will be all about.
I got to meet track announcer Larry Jewitt on Tuesday for the first time. Many will remember Larry on the masthead of a number of racing magazines and newspapers over the years as Larry was one of the most highly decorated people in the racing information business who ended up here in Tampa and became the voice of EBRP. Larry is one of the "old school" type announcers who is all about information and keeping the fans informed, and not one of the "new" types of entertainment announcers that know it all and spin a bottle on their nose when things get slow or anything else to draw attention to themselves. Larry is an "easy listening" type which I enjoy.
Only one new car showed up for Tuesday night's program as several of the local drivers high in 2023 track points still haven't arrived for one reason or another. However, the one new driver is an interesting story. His name is Michael Leach and he is from Sun River Montana. He is a racing machine, having raced from nearly coast to coast in the last month.
He started out racing IMCA Modifieds in Arizona at Cocopah and then moved over to Central Arizona Raceway in Casa Grande to race both Modifieds and Late Models. That action wrapped up last Saturday after which he flew to Charlotte and then jumped in the hauler that was headed here to East Bay where he will race his UMP style Modified both here and at Volusia. After having raced crate and spec engine Late Models, an open Late Model is likely in his near future as his father co-owns Longhorn chassis with Steve Arpin so the resources are available.
He would race well in the loaded third feature on Tuesday, moving up to fourth at one point before an over aggressive driver speared him in the left rear which messed up his car and he was forced to pull off. For a young driver, he shows much ability driving different types of cars and I think he will be one to watch in the years to come.
In talking to drivers, a large part of the issues last night, other than the much over aggressive driving, the other issue many had was visibility. The track was wet and slimy and the timing of the high tide didn't help plus the coolness and dampness of the night all factored together to produce a track that even the veterans had a tough time figuring out. But that slime and dampness produced some difficult issues seeing with many drivers reporting that they ran out of tear offs by either the first lap or before their feature race actually started! And of course, no one would pull off though so they used the Louis Braille style of racing which is to go like heck until you feel contact and then slow down, maybe. But this certainly was a big factor in the multitude of yellow flags. Tuesday night the tide comes in sooner and track officials have eased off on the water so perhaps things will be smoother.
Many drivers were using high tech devices in their efforts to repair last night's damage but then there was Illinois driver Dave Wietholder. A crash last night gave his car a bent frame so to try and remedy the problem he chained his car to a tree on the property and pulled on it, a strategy used for as long as there has been racing. Apparently it worked at least to some degree as he was back on the track later running a feature.
Seventy two drivers signed in to race on Tuesday night with just a few not able to make repairs after the Monday night rugby races. And at least for the first part of the program, drivers had learned from the first night. Qualifying went much smoother than for the opening night with drivers doing what they were supposed to and following orders better so that whole portion of the program went better. Chris Wilson, Cole Czarneski and Kyle Strickler would be the fastest in their groups with Strickler fastest overall. Interestingly, only one of the three would end up in victory lane.
Overall, things did go much smoother on night number two although it would be fair to say that there were still a lot of yellow flags(eighteen in three features) and some grinding collisions that actually may have done more car damage than the opening night including one grinder that saw a front end loader needed to scrape off the track because so much radiator fluid had been dumped by multiple cars who's radiators were shattered. The racing overall was better and a few more cars were able to make it to the checkered but most cars were again covered in mud by race end as the track remained tricky and slippery.
Austin Holcombe is not complaining so far about track conditions or anything else as he drove to his second victory in the series so far, the only driver to not have tasted defeat. He would lead the opening feature from start to finish, a race that would put questions in our mind right off that things were going to be unchanged from Monday night as this race had eight yellows and it took only one lap to produce an eight car grinding crash in turn three. Only half the field would finish this race but things would improve after that.
After each of the many restarts, Holcombe would again pull away as he was not challenged during the twenty five lap event. Fast qualifier Wilson would battle back and forth with Will Krup for second with Krup moving into second on lap night and holding that spot for the rest of the race, despite challenges by Wilson following each of the many yellows.
Through patience and attrition, Allen Weisser would move up to fourth after the "A-Dog" started twelfth with Mike Potosky finishing fifth despite sporting a car body that had been pummeled.
The surprise of the night would see young Cole Czarneski back up his quick time effort with a win in the second twenty five lapper. Czarneski, who normally races IMCA Modifieds and Stock Cars and was also in Arizona racing earlier this month, would make one of his first efforts in the open motor Mods a successful one.
Michael Turner would get the jump on Czarneski and lead the first eleven laps but it seemed that the more laps Cole would run, the better he would get as he found out just what his car was capable of doing. Turner was guarding the inside line and as Czarneski discovered, he could roll around the outside of Turner and on lap eleven he drove right past the Tennessee racer to take over the lead.
And once in front, he would have to deal with two more yellow flags that bunched the field but each time he would pull away, showing great speed and increasing comfort at running this tricky track. The last half of the race would go nonstop and Cole would pull away, even navigating lapped traffic smoothly as he built a full straightaway lead over what was likely a somewhat stunned field as they tried to figure out just who this "Cheesehead" was! Czarneski's father, by the way, is one of the two owners, along with Toby Kruse, of 141 Speedway in Wisconsin.
Turner would settle for second with Ray Bollinger driving up to third at the finish. Treb Jacoby and Seth Daniels would complete the top five with only eight drivers on the lead lap at the finish and twelve on the track.
The third feature, at least from appearances, would be the most stacked of the night. The first three rows would consist of Stickler and Lee, Garner and Skaggs and then Wing and Leach.
However, this didn't seem to bother Lucas Lee who would take the lead on the opening lap and then hold that advantage for all twenty five laps. Strickler would run second for the first four laps until Wing moved up to pass him and then one lap later Strickler would explode a tire and be done.
It seemed that Wing moved up to second quickly and might be a threat but Lee would have none of that and would pull away on every restart of which there were six during the race. Lee was clearly the class of the field, never moving off the bottom like he often does but making the "ditch" work for him exclusively.
Leach would move to third by the halfway point of the race until he was passed on lap twenty by Skaggs and then later eliminated when he got stabbed by another driver. There was quite a battle going on behind the top three with some real wild driving going on as the concrete outside wall was under fire from Modifieds slamming off it but somehow both Jimmy Lennox and Todd Nieheiser would keep their cars in one piece and complete charges to round out the top five.
I was quite surprised to learn that because they had gone to a multi feature event program, the purse money had to be divided up to more racers and I was shocked to learn that each feature race winner was only receiving $600 to win and it was only $50 to start both Monday and Tuesday.
The program was completed about a half hour earlier than the previous night and all racing was completed by 9:30 pm on what was another unseasonably cool January night by the Bay.
Later in the evening I got a bulletin from race management at the track that starting on Wednesday night, the old format will go back into play which means that drivers will be divided into heats, they will only qualify against their heat race opponents and that a certain number will make the main from each heat and from following B Features. In other words, only one feature race per night and no participation medals.
Also, points will be calculated starting on Wednesday with the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday shows added together to determine lineups for the races on Saturday with no qualifying on Saturday. Apparently the grand experiment is over.
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