The Heartland Modified Tour season opener was Friday night, March 21st at the Humboldt Speedway in Humboldt Kansas. The regional Modified Tour series raced on Friday night as a part of their season opening weekend doubleheader here, dubbed the Whitworth Spring Classic in honor of the Whitworth family, the original owners of this facility that pushed it to the forefront among tracks in the Midwest for their big time Modified races.
Randal Schiffelbein Jr made a big move on the opening lap to grab the front spot and then led from that point to the finish to score his first ever Modified feature win at "The Hummer." Midwest Modz and Factory Stocks were also on the racing card on Friday with "The Real Tyler Davis" and Dallas Joyce the winners in those two main events.
Many will know that this was a weekend of conflict, for lack of a better word to use, among Modified racing teams and promoters over their scheduled events. Everyone is aware that there is also a one hundred grand to win Modified race going on this same weekend about two hours straight West of Humboldt. The establishment of this race, both of its timing and location, has created quite a schism among drivers and who they will support with long term ramifications possible.
I talked to Heartland Modified Tour owner and promoter Trenton Berry about this as we both kind of tip toed around the subject. I didn't want to belabor the issue, feeling Berry had been asked these same questions about a million times since the announcement of the hundred grand show and not surprisingly, Berry taking the high road. Berry is trying to make this regional series work for the drivers of the Midwest and possibly the most disappointing thing to him is some of the drivers that were supporting the other hundred grand show, drivers that he would have expected to support this series designed to help the promoters and drivers of this area with some special events to help them while also at the same time not making the purses so big that it ham strings the promoters as this series does go to some fairly small facilities.
Berry did work very hard to ensure a good field of cars for this event, believing that no matter what else was going on, he needed a solid field of drivers for the first events for the series this year. And he succeeded in doing so, as forty two Modified drivers signed in for the first of two nights of racing with full shows offered both nights. I suspect that Trenton was very happy with the number of drivers he drew and while the other event saw just over sixty drivers for the hundred grand, he was still able to provide the fans of Humboldt with a very solid field. Moving forward though, it will be interesting to see what ramifications come from where the drivers selected to race this weekend.
The Heartland Tour, just as with the ARMS Tour that Berry also owns, has seen some procedural changed for 2025. Berry said he looked at a number of different qualifying tactics to use and talked to many drivers and in the end, despite that fact that Berry stated he doesn't like time trials, that is what the Heartland Tour will be using this year.
The drivers qualify with a split field, and with the number of drivers on hand Friday, they ran four heat races. The heats are started straight up from the times with four drivers making the feature. the rest go into a pair of B Features to set the twenty four car field for the main event. The heat winners redraw against themselves for positions in the main and the second place heat race finishers do the same. It is virtually the same format that most of the Late Model series use with passing points apparently now a thing of the past. Modified drivers, just as the Late Model drivers have learned in recent years, now face a good portion of their evening's success on how they qualify. Is this a good thing? I guess the numbers of butts in the stands over time will tell us that but I know that I share Trenton's opinion on qualifying.
The majority of drivers on hand this weekend are from the Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri area and kudos to them for having so many strong teams while still missing a number of drivers that would routinely be a part of this series. Even with some absent, there still were twelve of the top twenty in 2024 points on hand. Wyatt Gaggero and Jason Pursley were the quickest of their flights in time trials with Gaggero overall fastest at 15.340 seconds. As stated earlier, four heats and a pair of B Features set the running order for the main with no provisional starters.
Dustin Hodges and Shadren Turner shared the front row for the thirty lap main event but the move of the race was made by Schiffelbein Jr on that opening lap as Hodges drifted a bit up the track on the opening round and Schiffelbein Jr ducked under him in turn four and edged into the lead. He was able to completely clear Hodges on the next lap and the race lead was him.
Only one full lap was made before the first year when Bobby Williams spun but Chase Sigg and Chevy Coleman had moved into the top five. Schiffelbein Jr continued to lead on the restart as Turner moved into second and provided the stiffest challenge to the leader.
Several laps of hard racing saw quite a bit of contact back in the pack as the track had turned icy slippery and drivers fought for traction. Lap eight saw the second slow down of the race as Tyler Davis and Coleman came together in turn four. More on the fireworks involved in that accident later.
As the race continued into its second half, Schiffelbein Jr continued to be challenged by Turner who nearly got a nose inside for the lead off turn four. Gaggero was on the move after starting sixth and he crashed the top three by the halfway point with Hodges and Brandon Givens next in line. One more yellow slowed the action when Derek Watson lost power on the track and slowed.
Schiffelbein Jr then started to pull away from Turner and run alone as the leader. There would be no late challenges and he crossed the finish line alone as the winner. Turner finished a strong second with Gaggero, Givens and Hodges rounding out the top five. Seventeen drivers were still on the track at the finish.
Speaking of the one "black eye" of the race, Davis had been moving forward after starting fourteenth on the grid. A couple of his passes had been done using quite a bit of force on the drivers he wedged out of the way. After doing so to Coleman, Chevy responded by taking out Davis and instead of Ford vs. Ferrari, we had Chevy vs. Davis. They slammed each other quite hard under yellow and then the scary part occurred when Davis went roaring into the infield to the hot pit area where Coleman was stopped for service. Lots of folks in the area with no protection as Davis came barreling into the area and a minor scrum broke out between crews with officials trying to mitigate the damage. Both drivers were disqualified from the event and it was a bad scene indeed. These are the types of things when people get hurt. It seems awful early in the season for such hot tempered behavior but both drivers are from the Wichita area and perhaps there is history from that but in any event, it was an ugly scene.
It was noted that while the other two classes racing on this night used "The Choose Cone", the Modifieds did not and did their normal Delaware restart. Well known starter Mike Striegel was waving the flags for the Modified series also.
A nice field of two dozen Midwest Modz signed in for racing on Friday which saw them run three full heat races and a main event using passing points to set their running order.
In a bit of confusion, "The Real Tyler Davis", this one from Chanute, led from start to finish to win the twenty lap main event. Fortunately, the Midwest Modz did a bit better than last week's yellow flag fiasco, but they still managed to slow the action six times for one car spins with a couple of the multi spinners asked to leave the track due to their difficulties.
Davis started on the outside pole and led the entire contest as he worked the high groove to his advantage. He had several challengers for second with Dylan Daniels running there first before he was replaced in second by Brady Folk. Folk's night ended when the rear end on his car locked up, triggering the last of the yellows.
Davis remained solid up front and drove on for the win with Sam Keller coming from seventh to claim the runner up spot after a good battle with Daniels and Ryan Smith.
The Factory Stocks had a very meager field of drivers on hand which resulted in just a single heat and then feature. Dallas Joyce started on the pole and led all the way, opening up nearly a full chute on last week's winner Dylan Allen. Donnie Devers finished third as only those three were still running when the checkered came out.
When talking with Berry, one of the strongest reasons that he doesn't like time trials is because they always seem to cause the racing event to start late as tracks never seem to start early enough and budget the proper amount of time to do the trials and still start at their advertised time. But unfortunately, while the problem has been diagnosed, there was no cure for the ailment, at least on this night.
The first race didn't start until 8:43 pm which put the rest of the program behind schedule and the final checkers didn't wave until Midnight on a March evening where once the sun set, it cooled off rapidly. And most unfortunately, many in the crowd had froze out by then and weren't even on the grounds to see the Modified feature which was the last race run. Humboldt has an advertised start time of 8 pm for their weekly shows, which seems ridiculously late as discussed in last week's blog. However, the racing product was good in the Modified class tonight with just a few loose ends to be tied up.
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