Brian Birkhofer came within a straightaway of lapping the entire field as he blew away the competition on a “Tornado Tuesday” at the West Liberty Raceway. Only one of the best Late Model drivers ever, Billy Moyer, was able to remain on the lead lap as Birkhofer walked away with the $10,000 top prize after fifty laps of domination.
The feature event started on a sour note when Minnesota driver and row five starter Andrew McKay went into a spin in turn three on the opening lap sending the rest of the field scrambling for an opening. Five cars were involved in the mishap with three of them, Tommy Elston, Skip Frey and Kevin Kirkpatrick sustaining enough damage that they were through for the night. The mess took around fifteen minutes to clean up as the large crowd waited patiently for the restart with Birkhofer and Moyer on the front row.
Moyer still had his nose under Birky when the duo completed lap number one, but that would be as close as he would be for the rest of the non-stop fifty-lapper. By lap thirty Birkhofer had built up a half of a lap advantage over Moyer and had lapped all the way up to the fifth-place car of Chris Simpson. Birkhofer’s closest call of the night came with just four laps remaining when he was attempting to lap the third-running car of Chris Simpson. Brian had the nose of his #15B nearly to the drivers door of Simpson’s #25 as they entered turn one and Simpson slammed the door going straight to the bottom groove forcing Birky to back out of it in order to keep from hitting the inside berm. That didn’t slow him much though as he passed Simpson down the backstretch on the same lap and was tracking down Moyer before Doug Haack waved the double checkers on one of the most dominating performances I have ever witnessed. I think I even saw Birkhofer pass me when I was on my way home!
Moyer had nearly a half lap advantage over the third-place car of Chad Simpson at the finish while Matt Miller and Chris Simpson completed the top five. The track was wide and fast tonight, proven out by a new track record set by Moyer in qualifying, and the method of using heats and a fast dash to set the feature lineup definitely saw the cream rise to the top as the top five started first, second, fifth, third and fourth respectively.
A nice field of seventeen Stock Cars provided some great support action as the fifteen-lap main event saw two drivers swap the lead back and forth mid-race. David Brandies and Greg Gill earned front row starts by finishing one-two in the Dash and they pretty much ran the first eight laps of the feature event side-by-side. Brandies officially had the advantage on the scoresheet for the first five laps before Gill slipped by on lap six. Brandies fought back though regaining the lead on lap eight and he then opened up about a ten car-length advantage over the remaining distance to take the $500 win. The race actually ended under red flag conditions as Lavern Cole Jr. rolled his car in turn two just as the leader was exiting turn four for the final time. I must say that I like that the track rules here are to call the race complete in this circumstance with the finish scored from the white flag lap. I have been to other tracks where the rules would have necessitated a green-white-checkered restart that, in my opinion, is completely unfair to a leader, like Brandies, who is only a hundred yards from taking the win to make them restart and run TWO complete laps to keep their victory.
Gill finished in the runner-up spot with Matt Greiner taking third and Scotty Pratt fourth. Justin Temeyer was one of two drivers who normally run IMCA that pulled in for the night and he looked good taking fifth against the West Liberty regulars. Damon Murty was the other visitor and he was locked in a three-way battle for sixth when the red flag came out.
Tornado Tuesday Notes…..The twenty-eight car Late Model field was spiced up by three drivers from California who ran at Cedar Lake this past weekend and who are now headed for Florence, Kentucky. Mike Johnson made the show out of his heat race, pitted after the first lap scramble in the feature and restarted from the rear of the field. Zack Forster was running in a transfer spot in the second B-Main before dropping out with mechanical issues and Johnny Malcum failed to transfer out of the first B-Main…..Track point leader Andy Eckrich took exception to the first-lap move that his brother-in-law Chris Simpson made in their heat race and apparently made his feelings known in the pits afterwards. No official announcement was made on what exactly happened, but Eckrich did not run either of the B-Mains and was done for the night…..Nick Marolf was one of the drivers with no place to go on the first-lap incident although he was able to restart after making some repairs in the pits. Marolf has won a couple of times this season at West Liberty, but destroyed a car here a couple of weeks ago after a meeting with the turn three wall. I was told in the pits before the evening started that Marolf had purchased a car from Matt Furman and the fact that the deck was still painted blue, like Furman’s, to me confirms that info to be pretty good……We were given a preview of what was to come in the Late Model Dash as in just six laps Birkhofer and Moyer had left the other four cars in their wake, a full straightaway behind…..With just two classes on hand there were a few moments of down time here and there that were filled nicely by the announcing duo of Jerry Mackey and Mike Becker. At one point Mackey spoke to the crowd about the tough times that we are all going through and stated that the best way for racing to survive was for all of us to be positive about the sport. That’s why we’re here at PositivelyRacing.com Jerry!…..Weekly action continues on Saturday nights in August at the West Liberty Raceway and on Saturday night August 29th the Late Models will run for a possible $1,500-to-win, plus the Ideal Ready Mix Sprint Invaders will join the card for an attractive double-header.
We are proud to add Brian Neal’s Midwest Racing News blog to http://www.positivelyracing.com/ this week! If you are looking for the full scoop on what is going on at Donnellson, Burlington, Quincy and more, you will find it there. And, for news on tonight’s USMTS show at Osky as well as full coverage of the Southern Iowa Sprint Weeks at Knoxville and Oskaloosa you can look here on the Back Stretch as well as on Running The High Side with Barry Johnson. Hope to see you at the track!
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