Sprint Car/Open Wheel fans here in the upper Midwest (Iowa, Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Nebraska) definitely have plenty of options tonight and, while that may seem like a good thing at first, it might actually make most shows suffer a bit due to spreading the talent too thin.
The ASCS National Series is at Lake Ozark, the World of Outlaws are at Lakeside (Kansas City), Knoxville, St. Francois and Eagle have their weekly shows, the POWRi Midgets are at Belleville (Illinois) and USAC Sprints and Midgets are at 34 Raceway (Burlington). Every one of these shows are within a reasonable five hour drive or less from my front door and I am making the 20 minute jaunt down to Burlington, but just how many cars will we see tonight?
The ASCS National series averages over fifty cars an event and tonight should be no different, especially since this event will also serve as a Memorial for Jesse Hockett and his former crew chief Daniel McMillin. The Outlaws only had 25 cars at McCool Junction last night and three of them (Brian Brown, Bronson Maeschen and Chad Humston) will likely be at Knoxville tonight instead of Lakeside. Will three or more take their place and keep the car count above 25 tonight at Lakeside? Knoxville's 410 count has already flirted with having less than 20 on a couple of occasions this season and if there are any defections for Lakeside, tonight could be the night they go below that full feature field number. Knoxville's 360 count might even pick up a car or two tonight though since Jackson, Minnesota, has cancelled due to wet grounds.
As for the USAC show at 34 tonight, Morgan and I were originally hoping to see 20 Sprints and 30 Midgets, but that was before we realized that the POWRi midgets were running a two-day show at Belleville this weekend. There were 34 midgets there last night with Brad Loyet taking the win. Loyet is currently tenth in the USAC Midget points, but we are betting that he will stay close to home tonight and try to make a clean sweep. We are now hoping for 16 in each to give us two good heats and a solid feature in both divisions. Either way it will be a unique opportunity to see something different on the high-banks of 34 Raceway.
I waited to write this late in the day to make sure that nobody could think that I was trying to discourage people from going to the track of their choice tonight. Hopefully all of them will have great shows no matter what the car count is.
Finally, I just caught the end of the Nationwide Series race at New Hampshire and of course they had to interview Danica after her 30th-place finish. Watching an unscripted Danica interview can be very painful as through the extreme usage of "and ummm", "ya know" and "so" she can make one sentence last for at least a minute, or two, or three. You would think that her publicist would drag her to a Dale Carnegie class sometime and try to polish her act a bit. By the way, Danica made sure that Morgan Shepard knew that she didn't like that he spun her out on lap seven by bumping him on pit road at the end of the race. Take that old man!!!
I hope that you aren't reading this until you get home from the track tonight or early on Sunday!
Be Positive, Support The Sport!
As a postscript to this I wanted to give you the actual car counts for some of the events mentioned above. As you will see in my June 27th post the USAC event at 34 Raceway drew 20 Sprints and 17 Midgets. The World of Outlaws at Lakeside had only 20 cars. Knoxville drew 24 410's and 28 360's and, as expected, the big car count of the night was at Lake Ozark where 52 cars were on hand to compete.
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