One of the first big events of the 2024 racing season in the upper Midwest kicked off on Friday night, May 3rd as the World of Outlaws Late Models opened up at the Mississippi Thunder Speedway near Fountain City Wisconsin.
The Dairyland Dash was originally scheduled to be a three night show with double preliminary feature races on the first two nights, followed by a thirty five grand to win main event on Saturday night. However, all the rain of the past couple of weeks caught up with MTS and the opening night action was cancelled very early in the week due to a very unfavorable weather forecast for Thursday and for once, their threats of miserable weather actually held up with an all day rain hitting most of the Badger State.
The program was reformatted then, with a full, one feature race event for Friday and Saturday with each night's main event to pay twenty five grand to the winner. The Modifieds, under ONUM rules, would have a full show each night also and they proved to be a very strong "supporting" division for this weekend.
Thirty three Late Models signed in to race on Friday night, a decent number and likely what we should expect to see at most of the events this year. It just is not like times in the past when the kind of payoff numbers we were talking about for this weekend would have pulled in a gigantic field of cars. Except for a few very rare and glorified events, those days are long past.
The top thirteen in WoO points and top eighteen of twenty were on hand and after that, it would be just a smattering of travelers and local and regional drivers that would produce the rest of the field. A very large crowd was on hand on one of the first nice evenings we have had in quite some time to see the changes made to MTS and the new court yard worked out well for the food vendors and race tram trailers for apparel. The new stage was also utilized with live music going on right after the final checkered flag fell.
An interesting change was made right before the program started and one that many of the fans perhaps never even caught. As mentioned in last week's report from here on their opener, they had small plastic barrels to mark the insides of the corners and keep the drivers from cutting too far into the infield and dragging dry dirt on to the track. We weren't very far into hot laps before a couple of these were clipped by the Late Models and dislodged from their moorings. Soon after, and I'm not sure following who's orders, but wreckers were seen hauling big tractor type ute tires across the track and replacing the little blue barrels in the corners. That took care of that problem and there would be no bogus yellows caused by these barrels on the track, as I also reported in last week's report had been a problem. I'm not under who's orders this change took place but there was certainly immediate action taken when someone in charge saw the need. I'm also happy to report that no one hit the big ute tires and damaged their car as some were painted white but others were still in their original black colors.
The WoO format would be their standard one of qualifying split into two groups based on numbers, four heats and a pair of B Features before the main. Cade Dillard and Nick Hoffman would be the quick qualifiers from their groups with Dillard overall quickest at 13.596 seconds as the track quickly slowed up once qualifying began. The heat races and two Last Chance events went off smoothly, however bad luck struck Clayton Stuckey who pulled all the way from Louisiana only to wreck on the first lap of his heat and need two wreckers' assistance to leave the track. He did return with what I believe to be a back up car for the B Feature but didn't make the show.
Twenty six cars would start the fifty lap main event as four provisional starters were added to the back of the field. Brian Shirley, who redrew the pole, would lead the opening lap with Hoffman, Dillard, Brandon Sheppard and Bobby Pierce quickly moving in on him. It would not be Shirley's night as Hoffman would blast past him on lap six and after that Shirley would fade back in the field, eventually just making the top ten.
Hoffman was very fast and he started to pull away from the field as Dillard and Sheppard had a great battle for second. They exchanged the position several times as Hoffman continued to run with a comfortable edge over the rest of the field. Pierce was on his way forward, gradually moving up to join the battle for second along with Ryan Gustin.
With only two of the starters eventually pulling off the track, traffic was very heavy and Hoffman was constantly challenged to find a way past and through the slower cars. As this was going on, Pierce started to get considerably faster as he closed in and then passed both Dillard and Sheppard, after quite a battle and took over second.
Hoffman was doing a fine job with the traffic as he maintained his lead, even as he came up on a group of slower cars running together that threatened to slow his progress.
Things changed with just fifteen laps to go when the first and only yellow of the race took place when Dustin Sorensen slowed with a flat tire. This would give Pierce his shot at the leader but Hoffman was up to the challenge as he quickly again pulled away and opened up some distance as he was clearly the class of the pack on this night. Sheppard would give Pierce a brief battle for second before falling back and settling for third with Gustin's late charge giving his fourth and Chris Madden, never a challenger earlier, would come up quickly at the end for fifth as Dillard slipped back. Twenty six of the starters were still on the track at the finish.
The Modifieds were listed as the support class for this event and what a support class they proved to be! Fifty Modifieds signed in to race on Friday night and their numbers and quality would likely be more appropriate as the headline attraction for many shows. There were drivers on hand from thirteen states plus Canada for this event.
MTS is feeling the glow of the one hundred grand to win show that will come to them the end of this month and as a result of this, drivers from near and far are coming when the chance presents itself to test the track and make themselves fast for that event.
One top of the always strong southern Minnesota Deer Creek field of cars in this class, with USMTS rained out this weekend some of their drivers also gravitated North to run this show. Throw in such heavy hitters as Kyle Strickler, Michael Leach, Ethan Dotson in Steve Arpin's car, Dallon Murty, Bobby Pierce, David Stremme and Curt Spaulding and you have as tough a field of drivers as will likely gather at one track all year. All this to race for, I believe two grand, with double that on Saturday.
The ONUM(One Nation Under Modified) rules were in effect which is basically that each driver declares their sanctioning body and those rules are followed so there were both American Racer and Hoosier tires on the track and some sporting big spoilers and others none. All this in preparation for the big money race the end of this month.
The Modified portion of the show would be a passing points affair with the drivers drawing for starting positions in the heats and then five heats plus two B Features to set the starting positions for the main event plus one track provisional, giving them twenty five drivers for forty laps.
Lucas Schott would start on the pole and would take the early lead. Only one lap was completed before Kyle Strickler would spin, slowing the action for the first of three times during the race.
Schott continued as the leader but Jim Chisholm, from the third row, quickly moved into second and began to challenge for the lead. Jake Timm, Leach and Cole Czarneski were also in the lead pack early on.
Chisholm continued to put the pressure on Schott and on lap fifteen he blew past him off turn four and took over the top spot. Stremme was working his way forward into the top ten after starting in the seventh row when he slowed one lap short of halfway and the yellow flew once again. Timm, Schott, Brandon Davis and Leach were the top five at this point.
Following each yellow, Chisholm would again pull away from the field as no one had anything for the young driver from Northeastern Iowa. Davis continued his march to the front, moving past Timm for third. Then Jake slowed with a flat tire and called it a night, leaving just five laps to go.
And while Davis had shown speed, climbing forward throughout the race, he had nothing for Chisholm over the final five laps as Jim once again pulled away from the pack to claim the win and his second straight here at MTS, having won the regular season opener here last Thursday as well. Davis would finish a solid second with Schott, Rodney Sanders and Curt Spaulding completing the top five. Nineteen of the starters were still on the track at the finish. It was another strong showing for Chisholm, who is very rapidly climbing the ladder of recognized Modified drivers.
As reported in last week's story, new dirt has been put on MTS this year and for the second straight night it held up well, especially under heavy pounding from so many cars. It remained smooth and along with the reshaping of the corners, has helped the drivers to move around on the track more and run more different grooves with not nearly as much cushion pounding as this track used to have. But as also suspected, it does come with the cost as quite a bit of dust in the air was noted and without a favorable wind at our backs on Friday, we did look like we attended a dirt track race afterward. All racing was complete by just about 11 pm.
Thanks to all the folks that work for the World of Outlaws for their help, along with Tyrone Lingenfelter and the crew at MTS as they all hosted a large contingent of race fans on this night. The second half of this doubleheader will be held on Saturday with the money up for the Late Models and the Modifieds racing for more.
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