Week two of the Pitt Stop Motorsports, IMCA TV Winter Nationals started off on Tuesday night, January 14th at Central Arizona Raceway East of Casa Grande Arizona. Racing at the Pinal County Fairgrounds. Located at Eleven Mile Corner, the program is under the direction of Brad Whitfield who has been the promoter at the track since racing resumed there just under two years ago.
The improvements that have been made at the track since I was there a year ago at this time have been quite remarkable. When last I was here at CAR, the track had no wall around it and cars were continuously slipping over the edge of the track as drivers drove often beyond their limits, knowing that the worst that could happen to them was that they would slip off into the run off area and trigger yet another yellow flag, off which there were so many that it became ridiculous. Apparently Whitfield felt the same way as a wall now surrounds the entire track, giving the place a much better look and while I haven't yet seen a full race program, I can imagine that with the wall the number of needless yellow flags will be cut significantly. The visual to me with the wall all the way around and surrounding the track makes it look smaller to me but that is not the case in reality.
The wall is topped with big billboards that go all the way from turn one to turn four and even though they just got them completed a week ago Friday, two thirds of them are already covered with sponsor ads, again just improving the looks of the place.
A new building has been put in place for the pit draw in the pits and new showers and restrooms have been brought in for the pit folks. The press box/VIP booths have been added on to and now run the length of the covered grandstand, one of three grandstands on the front stretch. The one thing the track still doesn't have and that is a scoreboard but I would not be surprised if by next year they one of those too. Things definitely seem on the uptick here and as one of the few dirt tracks in the state of Arizona and the closest one to both the metro areas of Phoenix and Tucson, they are taking advantage of that as they start to book bigger events and new series to their track including a High Limits Sprint Car show this year.
For those that were missing "The Hook" and his buddies on their wrecker crews at the WWS, they are here working this event which only makes sense with them being based in Tucson and this track much closer. I do not know for sure but they might be among the weekly crew that works events at this track.
Four race programs have already been held here this week for the IMCA Winter Nationals and with well over two hundred cars having been in action in five classes, the first week was a highly successful one, even though they had to fight a bit of rain during one of the shows, lots of wind and cold temperatures.
Week two would see the same four core classes of IMCA racing with the Mod Lites brought in this week to replace the Sport Compacts. But first, on this night, the second week would begin with a few unique events.
The Gene Freeman Memorial Pit Crew Challenge, a staple of this event, would kick off Tuesday night. The format is simple. Under the timing watch, each race car comes to a stop beyond a designated point, two crew members come to the car, jack it up, replace the right rear wheel, the car is dropped and it must make one full lap of the track with the timing ending when it crosses the line. Twenty eight teams, representing all classes of racing, would attempt this challenge with the winner earning a grand for their team. The event was well organized, didn't take long to complete and was entertaining with sage comments added by event announcers Chad Myers, "Big Boy" Jason Frommelt and Ben Deatherage. The winner was the Dylan Thornton team with a time of 49.538 seconds.
Two other competitive events on Tuesday night was a forty lap special, non point race for the IMCA Hobby Stocks that paid a grand to the winner. The top thirty is series points to this date were eligible with twenty two cars actually taking the green flag for this race, which turned out to be one of the strangest seen in quite some time.
Dillon Richards, winner of three of four Hobby Stock features run so far this week, started on the outside of row two but before a lap was completed, he had already driven into the lead. He then charged away from the pack at a blistering pace and before long was already lapping cars. The other driver making big moves was Blake Luinenberg who had started tenth and was also cutting through traffic like a hot knife through butter. These two were clearly the class of the field as they drove away from everyone.
It was crazy the way that Richards was coming through the pack, lapping cars at will and soon getting up to the top five runners. As the race remained under the green, there were only three cars left on the lead lap by the halfway point with Luinenberg a full half lap behind and Morgan Olmstead also managing to stay on the lead lap.
However, all the dominance came to an end on lap twenty six when a stalled car triggered the first yellow flag and the field was realigned with Luinenberg now on the tail of Richards. And Dillon was not able to run away from Luinenberg as Blake stayed right in his tire tracks as they however, pulled away from the rest of the field.
One more yellow for debris set up a final eight lap sprint to the finish and Richards was not able to shake Luinenberg. In fact, Blake started to put heavy pressure on the leader. and looked for a path to pass. On the final lap, Luinenberg had a good run to the inside of the leader going into turn three and many would have tried a wild slider at this point, whether it be successful or not. However, Luinenberg didn't and raced Richards clean with Dillon holding on for the win. Olmstead finished third with Hunter Farrell and Neil Pella completing the top five. The forty lapper clicked off fast with their being only three cars on the lead lap at the finish and fourteen that finished.
The evening concluded with the first annual Canadian Modified Shootout event. Ten Canadian based Modified teams threw money in together with the proceeds going to a charity and they ran a ten lap event. Russell Duncan took the early lead but a monkey wrench was thrown into the proceedings at the halfway point when the yellow flew for debris on the track. At this point the field was inverted with Duncan suddenly finding himself at the tail of the field.
No matter, he simply charged back to the front in the remaining laps and still won the race over Sir Lawrence O'Connor and Chris Beaulieu. After that, the track was turned over for practice with drivers in all five classes getting laps in for this coming week.
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