Welcome to 2009, and most of all good riddance to 2008! Hopefully the New Year will be good to us all! We started ours off in great fashion by watching the Iowa Hawkeyes trounce South Cackalacka in the Outback Bowl and on the way home we made a stop at the Talladega Short Track for a taste of the 2009 Ice Bowl.
The growth of this event over the years is incredible to say the least and although this year’s car counts were not record setting, they still topped 360 across the five divisions, including nearly 90 Super Late Models. At the first Ice Bowl that I went to back in the early 1990’s they parked everybody in the infield of the 3/8th-mile oval and while it was tight, they were all in there, haulers and all. Nobody parks in the infield now, but there are race haulers absolutely everywhere else on the property and with rain falling both Friday and Saturday night the red clay was a soupy mess!
We arrived just before noon on Saturday and only the four wheelers could stay up on the slick surface. It wasn’t long before the wide-tired southern-style Bombers were called to the track and they were able to push even more of that moisture into the red clay. And by one o’clock the first set of Super Late Model hot laps were on the track it wasn’t long before they were up to speed. Trust me, if this amount of moisture would have been spread across the racing surfaces of the Midwest, everybody would have been sent home a long time ago. Iowa driver Jeremy Grady was among that first set of hot laps to be put under the green and he caught the eye of the locals by aggressively passing others on the still slick surface. The hot laps continued, and continued and, well you know it takes a long time to hot lap 360 cars, so with rain approaching the track from the south and with freezing precipitation forecasted overnight for our route home, we decided to hit the road just before SLM qualifying got underway.
Grady qualified in the lower half of the order and then scratched out of the sixth heat race and another “northern” driver that caught our eye was Hermitage Missouri’s Eric Turner. Always a threat to win in his Modified, Turner will be driving a team car to Poplar Bluff’s Steve Rushin in 2009 and it will be interesting to see if he can be as successful in the transition as fellow Missouri Mod hotshoe Jesse Stovall has been. Like Grady, Turner’s Ice Bowl will be one to forget as he finished last in his heat and scratched out of the consi.
Ray Cook took the win in the Super Late Model feature edging out James Ward and Billy Mayo. In the IMCA Modifieds it was Wisconsin driver Benji LaCrosse taking the win after east Alabama driver Terrance Nowell was disqualified. Several drivers from the PositivelyRacing.com coverage area made the show as Jason Pursley finished 7th, Jordan Grabouski was 9th, John Fellers was 14th, Jeremiah Asher 16th, Chris Tonoli 17th, Alex Hanson 18th and Randy Havlik was 19th. There were over fifty Modifieds in attendance.
We kept an eye on the Alabama radar as we drove home and I find it amazing that the TST crew, headed up by Lynn Phillips and Alfred Gurley, were able to come back on Sunday after another night of rain and get this show in the books. Quite a feat year after year with a ton of racecars and facing the uncertain weather in the dead of winter! The Ice Bowl is one of those events that every dirt track fan should experience at least once.
Closer to home things seem relatively quiet as promoters and competitors prepare for the upcoming season. With little or no scuttlebutt going around at this point things do not look good for weekly racing to happen this year at either Eldon IA or Memphis MO. These two tracks, separated by just forty miles, both raced weekly on Saturday nights and both closed early in 2008. I thought that it would be interesting to see if one of them could be successful while the other sat idle, but as of right now it doesn’t look like that will happen. If they cannot run weekly I at least hope that each facility can host a special or two along with a racing event during their respective county fairs.
Central Missouri Speedway promoter Earl Walls reversed course on January 10th and announced that, yes, his track would continue to run their weekly Saturday night show in Warrensburg. Just two months earlier he announced that the track was for sale and that, if it he still owned it in 2009, he would only run his big three special events. Shortly after that announcement was made nearby Valley Speedway announced that they would move their weekly program from Friday to Saturday, and soon after that Butler Speedway announced that they would move their weekly program from Sunday nights to Fridays. It will be interesting to see how all of this shuffling at these Kansas City area tracks effects car counts and the fans of each.
News from the IMCA Late Model ranks has been hot starting back in October when the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson rolled out the details for the Pilot Grove Savings Bank/Ideal Ready Mix “Drive for Five” schedule and it continued in December when a very solid Deery Brothers Summer Series schedule was released. With more Deery races scheduled up in the northeast quadrant Iowa, look for more of the Independence area drivers to chase the series in 2009. In southeast Iowa you will see Thad Trump and Rob Kirchner return to the Late Model ranks next season and popular Modified driver Tony Fraise has acquired a Rocket chassis and could be a threat to win a few in his “rookie” campaign. Matt Strassheim, who won the 2008 Pepsi USA Nationals at 34 Raceway in his final ride for car owner Lynn Richard, will be driving a second car out of Tom Darbyshire’s stable this year while Richard has joined forces with Keokuk driver Tommy Elston in what should be a formidable team. There is also mumblings that a high profile name out of the open Late Model ranks will be driving an R&D car testing a new aero package with a spec motor on Friday nights in Donnellson this year. More on that when it is confirmed.
Here’s an interesting event that you might want to check out this summer. Elko Speedway located about thirty miles straight south of the Minneapolis suburbs will be covering the asphalt with dirt for four nights of action July 22nd through the 25th. Included in that will be the IRA Sprint cars and the USMTS Modifieds. While I have not yet attended a race at Elko, I have stopped to look at it a couple of times and it is a beautiful facility. I’m going to do my best to make it up to at least one night of their dirt track presentation.
Johnny Herrera will return to the Knoxville Raceway on a weekly basis in 2009 driving Larry Woodward's #2 car that had previously been driven by Craig Dollansky of the World of Outlaw series.
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