I made my way over to Osceola Saturday afternoon for the grand opening of the Clarke County Speedway and I was very impressed with the friendliness and the enthusiasm of owners Tim and Janene Nelson and their entire family. It is obvious that they have put a lot of hard work and resources into the new facility and if the area decides to support them I feel that this place will be a big success.
The opener was a bit short on cars and competitors, something that I expected from the simple fact that there just aren't that many race cars already up and running in this area. Even though Iowa has more race tracks per capita than any other state in the nation, this one particular area of the state does not have any, until now. The divisions that they are planning to run are all economical and built for fun, so if the racing bug hits the area look for car counts to grow, and possibly grow very fast.
On this day the Iowa Mini-Sprint Association brought a field of ten with Dan Beerends taking the victory. Taylor Musselman of Norwalk topped the field of Open Front Wheel Drive cars and there was some good action in the Stock Front Wheel Drives, the Pro 4 Trucks and the Double Figure-8 divisions as well.
Picking my way through the results this morning I see that Grinnell driver Todd Reitzler made the pull down to the Adams County Speedway in Corning Saturday night and won the Hobby Stock Feature.
It was good to see that Knoxville had thirty-two cars on hand for the twin features in the 410 class with Terry McCarl and Ian Madsen taking the win. The roster included veteran Aussie driver Max Dumesney who was making his first appearance at the track in some time and he brought along his sixteen-year-old son Mitchell for his debut as well. You'll recall that Max's wife and Mitchell's mother, Melinda Dumesney has also been a competitor in the 410 class at Knoxville, so Mitchell is a unique "second generation" driver.
Nice to see Mike Weikert Jr. of Muscatine back in victory lane after winning the IMCA Modified main event at 34 Raceway Saturday night.
I-55 Raceway in Pevely had to cancel last night's show due to high water closing off the access road to the Speedway. This is the second time that they have had to cancel due to this issue in the past month.
While some tracks' car counts are remaining solid there are a couple who are fading fast. Here's hoping that this trend turns around for those facilities soon.
I'm watching the radar closely today hoping to go to either the UMP Summer Nationals event at Quincy or the Hogan Memorial at Vinton. Looks like Mother Nature may end up making the tough choice for me on this one. Hopefully your favorite track stays dry tonight and you can see some racing!
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