One slight miscue by Jon Tesch made all the difference in the outcome of the thirty lap feature for the USMTS Modifieds as Jason Hughes picked up the $2,000 top prize on a beautiful Tuesday night at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. Nathan Wood will remember it as a great night as well as he topped the field in two of the support divisions while Tyler Groenendyk won his first career feature in the B-Modifieds.
Tesch started the Modified main outside of young Ryan Gustin on row one and jumped to the lead at the drop of the green. The Watertown South Dakota speedster then opened up nearly a straightaway advantage as Jason Hughes moved by Gustin for the second position. A mid-race caution wiped away that lead and on the restart Hughes made a bid for the point using the low groove in turns one and two. Tesch was able to brush off that challenge and put a few car lengths between himself and Hughes looking as if he would be hard to beat in the final ten laps. As the leader approach some backmarkers with seven laps remaining, he got just a bit too high in turn two and made enough contact with the guardrail that it knocked down about a foot of his spoiler on the right rear. It was hard to tell if it was the damage to Tesch's car or the adrenaline rush that Hughes experienced seeing it happen just ahead of him, perhaps a combination of both, but the five car length difference between the two disappeared almost immediately.
Tesch and Hughes put on a great show over the next three laps as they ran side-by-side often, even while putting a couple of cars a lap down and with just three laps remaining Hughes put himself into the lead for good. Tesch tried one last time to regain the advantage using a different line through the corners, but he had to settle for second as Hughes pulled away over the final two laps. Ryan Gustin held off the persistent challenges of Brad Pinkerton to finish in the third spot while Zack VanderBeek completed the top five. VanderBeek moved quickly from his row six starting spot up to sixth in the early laps only to see his advancement slow from there. Al Hejna came from thirteenth to finish sixth and Dean Mahlsedt, who started next to VanderBeek in row six, came home seventh.
Leroy Groenendyk started from the pole position of the fifteen-lap B-Modified feature with his son Tyler right behind him in row two. The kid blew by his father off of turn two on the the first lap and never looked back taking his first career feature win by a full straightaway with Leroy holding on for second. Rookie driver Drew Lawson held his ground to finish in the third spot followed by Cory Brown and Andrew Schroeder. Of the top five only Brown started outside of it in seventh. A.J. Johnson won the first heat race of the night, but then appeared to not make weight afterwards as he started twentieth in the feature. A rookie in the division for 2009 Johnson was on the move and up to tenth before breaking the left front tie rod causing him to fade to 16th at the finish. (Note: The race story the following day stated that Leroy Groenendyk had been disqualified in post-race tech)
Front row starters Nathan Wood and Kyle Harwood swapped the lead a couple of times over the course of the fifteen-lap Stock Car feature with Wood regaining the lead on lap nine. From there Harwood's teammate Brian Mitrisin picked up the challenge and gave Wood all that he wanted over the final six laps only to come up short as Nathan Wood earned the victory. Zack Vanderbeek, who last week had wins in both the Modifieds and the Stock Cars here, would follow it up this week with a still impressive "top five" double as he finished in the third spot. Zack was forced to start ninth on the grid after dropping from his heat race with a flat right rear tire. Matt Greiner finished fourth with Harwood completing the top five.
After a quick victory lane interview with Tony Paris, Wood climbed aboard his Hobby Stock ride and started next to Pete Hutzell on the front row. Tony Teninty challenged Wood in the early laps and late in the race both Bobby Greene and Chris Hovden were within striking distance, but there was no stopping Wood from taking his second win in a fifteen minute time span. Greene, the winner of last Thursday's season opener, started tenth and finished second while Hovden who already has three wins this season up in the northeast corner of the state finished in third. Kris Walker and Dale Porter filled out the top five.
It must be noted that the three support class features raced for a total of forty-five green flag laps with just one caution, that coming on lap two of the Hobby Stock feature. Car counts were solid in three of the four divisions with 41 Modifieds, 20 Hobby Stocks, 20 B-Mods and 13 Stock Cars. The Stock Cars included a couple of drivers from out of the area as Kurt Krauskopf came down from Decorah and Jeff Zehr pulled in from Manson.
The USMTS Modifieds move to the Marshalltown Speedway tonight (Wednesday May 20th) and I believe that four of the five http://www.positivelyracing.com/ bloggers will be there to cover it. And Ryan Clark will have news from the Deery Brothers event from Allison "In Staging" so take some time to explore our site!
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