Night number four of the final East Bay Raceway Park Winternationals would take place on Thursday night, February 1st with the Modifieds again running a full program including qualifying, heats, B Features and a thirty lap main event on Thursday as the purse increases as the weekend approaches. It was another lovely night for racing at "The Clay By The Bay" and as the purses have picked up, slowly also have the crowds started to build too.
And those fortunate enough to be on hand for the racing program would see by far the best show of the week to this point. The Modified feature was excellent, the preliminaries good also and the program itself was the tightest that it has been so far too with the racing action starting right on time, very few delays or other setbacks and the final checkered would once again wave early.
The exciting Modified feature would see four different leaders in thirty laps and the winner would come from the fourteenth starting spot, almost unheard of in a time trial program that essentially starts the fastest cars right up front, at least in theory. And we would also see a couple of young drivers, relatively unknown in the world of Modified racing, assert their presence with a spectacular driving performance.
Seventy drivers would sign in for night number four of the series with the program being similar to that run on Wednesday night. The cars would be separated into eight groups based on their draw number and they would then qualify against their group. Straight up, the top two finishers would make the feature and then the top two of four B Features would also be added to the back of the pack, making a twenty four car field for the main event. While the drivers are racing for money, they are also racing for points as those that plan to race all week want those points for the big Saturday night show when the heats are lined up by points with no qualifying held.
Many drivers are still scratching their heads at how to get around this most tricky of racing ovals quickly and for than anything, show some consistency from lap to lap. I talked to a number of drivers, both new and veterans here and this track continues to throw more curves at the drivers than an Arkansas mountain highway after dark. It has been especially tricky this year, I think, as so far the track has also been watered quite heavily each night and as the tide comes in, it has made the character moods of the track even more pronounced, especially with the cool nights. From lap to lap the track has seemed to change dramatically with the fast line on the track moving all over and restarts have been particularly troublesome with traction sometimes at a minimum.
Later on Thursday I would note that the track seemed just a bit drier than it had been on previous nights and the racing was exceptional. Whether there was some correlation there or not, I do not know but the track was indeed very good with multiple racing grooves and little dust.
The evening started right off with a surprise when Michael Leach turned the fastest lap of qualifying as he timed in at 16.713 seconds. The track was about a half second slower than it had been previously but in this case, slower was better. Also surprising was that Treb Jacoby, Jason Garver and Kyle Strickler, all likely contenders to challenge for a win, all missed qualifying and would have to start in the back of heat races. Even so, two of the three would eventually make the main event with only Garver missing out by one position. And Strickler would be on the charge all night, eventually finishing fourth in the main event.
The heat races were all completed smoothly with few yellow flags and except for one bumpy B Feature, they too were raced off quickly with the main event set to roll onto the track by 9 pm.
Some different faces would start up front for the feature race with Chris Wilson getting the jump on Devin Dixon to lead the opening lap. Cole Czarneski, a winner here already this week, would start on the inside of row two and it would only take him one lap to pick up speed, drive under Wilson and take over the lead. Even in the early going, there was much more passing and moving around on the track than there had been in previous feature events and plenty of three and four wide racing as everyone wanted to move to the front.
Five laps were completed when the yellow waved for the first time as Todd Nieheiser tried to knock down the first turn wall and rolled to a halt. At this point, Czarneski still held the lead over Wilson with Brian Bernhardt in third. Shockingly, under the yellow, Austin Holcombe, a previous two time winner here this week already, would forfeit his fourth place in the running order as he headed to the pits which would move up Lucas Lee and Dixon one spot.
Czarneski would continue to lead as he was married to the bottom which was working well for him as he continued to set the pace until a Jeff Mathews spin on lap ten slowed things once again. Some of the strongest drivers were now starting to flex their muscle as Bernhardt had moved to second with Lee up to third. Michael Leach, who had lost a hard fought heat race to Lee which had relegated him to the fourteenth starting spot in the field, was on the charge as he moved up to fourth by this point.
One lap later, when Bernhardt hammered the wall and stalled, Lee had now moved up to second with Leach following him while Strickler had charged from fifteenth to the top five.
The last nineteen laps of the main would go nonstop and upon the waving of the green once again, Lee was all over Czarneski for the lead. Cole was getting a bit tight riding the low line and on lap thirteen, Lee would drive around him and take over the lead. However, to his credit, Czarneski would not lay down when he was passed and would instead seem to turn up the speed and two laps later, just at the halfway point, he would nose past Lee by inches to take over the lead once again.
However, it was now Leach that was the driver on the move, using the high side of the track. He would pass Lee for second and then close in on Czarneski for the lead. The two young lions would battle it out and finally, with just four laps to go, Leach would drive around Czarneski to take over the lead, after which he quickly extended his advantage. Lee had fallen back by this point and the two young drivers would pull away from the field, running one, two to the finish. Lee would settle for third with Strickler next in line.
Special note should be made of the fifth finishing car. Ryan Gierke had to win a B Feature just to make the main and the Minnesota driver, who loves to ride the wall wherever he races, did so with success in this race as he charged all the way up from nineteenth to round out the top five. The frantic pace of this race would see only a dozen cars finish on the lead lap.
How many folks would have had Leach and Czarneski at the top of their favorite charts going into this week? I had had the opportunity to see both race a number of times and while I knew they were both good, even I would not have believed they would be running so strong this week. Leach has the resources of Longhorn chassis behind him and He noted when I talked to him today that this was his seventeenth race of 2024 already and this is only the first day of February. He has already raced IMCA Mod, WISSOTA spec engine Late Models and now open Mods this year already but when I first saw him race in the Minnesota last Summer after tearing up the competition locally in Montana, I knew he would be good.
Czarneski also races a lot with resources to support him and although he races on the other side of the state of Wisconsin from me, I have seen him race enough to know that he is also very good. He too has already raced in Arizona this year before venturing down with the open Mod.
Round five of the Winternationals will be on Friday night and it will be interesting to see how the UMP Modified veterans respond to this challenge by the young upstarts from the non UMP parts of the country who are giving them so much grief.
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