News From The Lee County Speedway Banquet And More.....

It was another full house at the Comfort Inn & Suites in Fort Madison last night as drivers, crews, friends, family, sponsors and other assorted riff raff like myself attended the annual Lee County Speedway Awards Banquet. Promoters Terry & Jenni Hoenig and their entire crew do a fantastic job with the banquet each year and I truly appreciate the invite!

While enjoying a great meal that was catered in by Bennigan's across the street and washing it down with some of Pat Wehrle's magical elixir from Golden Eagle Distributing I picked up quite a bit of information. Some that I can share here, and plenty more that I could not, so here we go:

The first race night of the season at Lee County will be held on Saturday night April 17th as Jim Gillenwater at Discount Tire in Keokuk and several others have kicked in money to hold a $2,000-to-win IMCA Modified special event. With lap money added in it would be possible for a driver to take home $3,000 if he paced the field from green to checkered. Hobby Stocks and Sport Mods will also be on the card that night with each paying a healthy $400-to-win.

It was announced that the Thursday night July 1st Liberty Cup will not only be a part of the IMCA Great American Stock Car Shootout as previously announced, but it will also be one of the ten dates on the inaugural IMCA Modified Hawkeye Dirt Tour. I would think that you can count on forty to fifty cars in each class for this event, plus the Hobby Stocks will be in action for $400 to win. Looks like I had better start sucking up now as that will be my wife Christine's birthday and I don't think that spending a night at the races will be her idea of a present!

The track will have a new flagman in 2010 as Ryan Bergeson (I hope I'm spelling that correctly) will climb the ladder every race night. Ryan has been a familiar face at both Marshalltown and Webster City in recent years, but as a principal in the Memphis, Missouri, school system the trip to Donnellson will be a much shorter one for Ryan and his young family.

I'm not sure how it stacks up with other tracks, but I thought that it was pretty impressive that forty-three drivers had a perfect attendance record at the speedway in 2009. Each of them were given a free pit pass to use in 2010 at the Hoenigs showed their appreciation.

I had a great time sitting with the friends and family of Jeff Mueller and Jason Cook, the drivers that finished first and second in the Stock Car points chase. Jason and I visited after the festivities and he gave a me a couple of nuggets of info that I can share right now and one that will have to wait. Jason's brother Ryan who is with the military and stationed in Seattle, Washington, has purchased a 2008 Skyrocket Modified from Zack VanderBeek and will race it this season out in the Pacific Northwest. Ryan is slated to return home in May of 2011 and, as Jason put it, if he hasn't wrecked it yet he'll be ready to take on the Modified racers here in southeast Iowa with a year of experience under his belt. Jason also told me that he has been working with the talented Matt Greiner out of Washington in making one of Matt's two Stock Cars IMCA legal. According to Cook, you will see Greiner running IMCA Stock Cars at Lee County on Friday nights this season.

Stock Car driver Nick Fenton had trouble finishing races this past season, but he had no trouble finding the keg this night as he kept our tables well-stocked with full pitchers.

All six track champions (Mark Burgtorf, Jeff Mueller, Rodger Dresden, Derek St. Clair, Josh Foster and Dakota Fenton) did a nice job on their speeches and after last years routine that people would have paid for at a comedy club, they knew that Foster needed to be the last one at the podium. His best line of the night was this one and I have replaced an "s" word with another "s" word to keep this a family friendly blog. While thanking his sponsors Josh playfully sneered "I used to bitch about the guys with the cool stuff......now I'm the guy with the cool stuff"

I enjoyed visiting with Mark Burgtorf before the night got rolling and he stated that with the way that the 2010 Deery Brothers Summer Series schedule is structured, with no back-to-back weeknight races, he plans on chasing that title in 2010. Then, during his acceptance speech, Burgtorf revealed that his #7 will carry sponsorship from Casey's General Stores in 2010.

Car owner and former promoter at Lee County Lynn Richard was presented with a Sponsor Appreciation award by Terry Hoenig in recognition of the role that Richard played in bringing Late Model racing back to Donnellson on a regular basis with the "Drive for Five" schedule. Richard told me that his car with Tommy Elston behind the wheel will also follow the entire Summer Series schedule in 2010 and, given the probability that some of the drivers from the Simmons tracks will chase the series as well, Lynn said that it will be like a shark tank with he believes as many as fifty cars at each event.

Veteran driver Rich Smith of Davenport, who finished just five points behind Josh Foster for the track title at Donnellson, told me that he is very excited about the newly announced Hawkeye Dirt Tour for the IMCA Modifieds in 2010 and that he will definitely follow the tour in its first season. He may not be one of the names that fans think of when it comes to IMCA drivers who might win the inaugural championship, but after seeing how strong Smith was when he made frequent visits on the old NKF Tour I am going to go out on a limb and make him my darkhorse favorite for the HDT point championship in 2010.

Once again a big "Thank You" to Terry, Jenni, and everybody who made last night a special evening!

In some other news and thoughts.....I am very excited about the Hawkeye Dirt Tour and I am impressed with the way that things are being handled thus far in regard to the number of events being scheduled, where the races have been scheduled and how the engine claim situation will be handled. It is common sense that only drivers chasing the Tour can make engine claims although I am sure that someone will start a big debate about it somewhere on a message board. This Tour is setup for success and here's hoping that Mother Nature will cooperate and get things rolling in fine fashion for the opener on May 11th at Independence. For more details on the Hawkeye Dirt Tour visit http://www.dirttour.com/hawkeye/index.html

Peoria, Illinois, Late Model driver Tim Lance made the trip down to Columbus, Mississippi, this weekend for the 10th Annual Winter Classic and finished sixth in the Super Late Model feature. Dane Dacus of Lakeland, Tennessee, took the win with Alabama's Anthony Burroughs second. Matthew Turner, Jake Knowles and Neil Baggett completed the top five.

If you read down the older posts in my blog you will see that I have been busy tabulating the state Late Model pints for just about every state that runs Late Models on a regular basis. A summary of the 2009 champions follows:


State Champion(s)
Alabama - Chris Ragan
Arkansas - Billy Moyer Jr.
Florida - Jeff Mathews
Georgia - Randy Weaver
Illinois - Dennis Erb Jr. & Jason Feger
Indiana - Frank Heckenast Jr. & Richie Hedrick
Iowa - Ray Guss Jr.
Kansas - Jimmy Segraves
Kentucky - Victor Lee
Louisiana - Kyle Cummings
Maryland - Jamie Lathroum
Michigan - Dona Marcoullier
Minnesota - Jeff Wildung
Mississippi - Chris Wall
Missouri - Donnie Timmerman
Nebraska - Robert Osborne
New York - Chad Valone & Rod Maloy
North Carolina - Jeff Smith
North Dakota - Joey Pederson
Ohio - Rusty Schlenk
Pennsylvania - Sam Stile
South Carolina - Frank Coates
South Dakota - Chad Becker
Tennessee - Vic Hill
Virginia - Tommy Armel
West Virginia - Paul Wilmoth Jr.
Wisconsin - Russ Scheffler