My work schedule and other assorted commitments forced me into a different way of attending races this past week. So while I was able to get out to four different nights of racing this week, you only see a "write up" on one of them here on the Back Stretch.
On Wednesday night I made the trip over to the Peoria Speedway for the rescheduled Illinois State Championship race for the UMP Late Models and, since I had a meeting scheduled first thing in the morning on Thursday, I set my own curfew at 10:00 p.m. no matter where the program was at that point. This way I would be home by midnight at the latest. There was an interesting field of 43 Late Models in attendance including UMP national point leader Rusty Schlenk of Michigan, plus there were 30 Modifieds and just under 20 Hornets. Heat race action was good and the show was moving along in a decent fashion, so I thought that I had a pretty good chance at seeing the big 100-lap Late Model finale before my own curfew came up.
But after an intermission and some delays in the Modified and Hornet features the next thing I knew it was 9:40 and when Late Models started to pull onto the track with the drivers not buckled in and helmets on for an apparent on-track introduction process, I decided to hit the road a little earlier. When I spoke with retired racer Rollie Frink later in the weekend he asked me what I thought of that Late Model feature at Peoria and I told him my story of how I decided to leave early. Rollie then described to me what he called one of the best races that he had ever seen featuring a back-and-forth battle up front between Jason Feger and Jeep VanWormer as well as big charges from the back by three or four other drivers. Rollie then said that he thought that Ryan Unzicker might have been able to win it if the race hadn't ended under caution due to the track's curfew with about ten laps remaining and he too wondered why they would have run both support class features first given the curfew. As it was it was Jason Feger who was crowned as the 2010 Illinois State Champion with Ryan Unzicker second, Mike Provenzano third, Todd Bennett fourth and Jeep VanWormer fifth. Unzicker, Provenzano and Bennett all qualified out the two B-Mains, so all three started row seven or deeper. If you are looking for another show to attend this week, Peoria is back in action this Wednesday night the 6th as their World 100 for UMP Modifieds was again postponed by rain this past Saturday.
Thursday night my good friend and now ESPN celebrity Gary Crawford and I headed up to Knoxville for night one of the Lucas Oil Late Model Nationals and you will find my report on the evening in the entry below. Crawford, along with his wife Kathy and son Jordan has his five seconds of national exposure during the Iowa and Penn State telecast on ESPN Saturday night as they were shown longingly looking at the meat that Teri Walker was prepping on her grill. Was she really using Kingsford Gary?
Friday night was a high school football night for me as my father-in-law Bob Shores and the rest of his teammates from the undefeated 1960 squad were introduced prior to the New London Tiger homecoming game. After watching the first half there Chris and I headed back to Mt. Pleasant where the Panthers had a 6-0 lead on second-ranked Pella when we walked in midway through the third quarter. The first play that we saw was Pella's first touchdown and when we walked out a half hour later the final score was 21-6 Pella.
On Saturday night I headed down to Donnellson for the rescheduled Season Championship for the Ideal Ready Mix Sprint Invaders that had been pushed back from the previous week. With the rain date, several of the track's employees could not attend due to the fact that they had already purchased tickets for Knoxville, so I attempted to do Brian Neal's job as a fill in. I learned that Brian does quite a bit of work during the course of a race night at the Lee County Speedway so now I am even more impressed at the detailed reports that he compiles in Midwest Racing News at Positively Racing. The Sprint Invader feature saw Russ Hall race to an early lead only to have a slower car get sideways in front of him exiting turn two. With nowhere to go Hall made contact and the resulting damage ended his evening. Rager Phillips inherited the lead and looked like he would take the win until he started having some problems negotiating turn two. Series champion Kaley Gharst moved into challenge Phillips with five laps to go and when Rager slapped the guardrail in turn two that was all that Gharst needed to pull away for the season-ending victory while Phillips faded to fifth at the checkers.
With the beautiful weather on Sunday I made the trip down to the Quincy Raceway for what ended up as being their final event of the 2010 season. With the combo rules package that would allow the weekly IMCA Late Models, the UMP Crates and the ULMA Late Models to run together for $1,000 to win I was hoping to see several cars that I had only read about for the first time this season. And I did get my first look at Cliff Powell, Evan Fink and Trace Westling, but they were part of only an eleven-car field that saw Vance Wilson take the victory. Wilson has been running with the IMCA Late Models nearly every Sunday at Quincy while racing the ULMA shows in Missouri on Friday and Saturday where he looks like he will be the 2010 All Missouri Points Limited Late Model Champion. It was also the final day of national points for the UMP Modifieds and while there were rumors that several contenders might converge on Quincy just one, Devin Gilpin of Columbus, Indiana, made the tow. Jim Black of Bonne Terre, Missouri, won his first feature at Quincy while Gilpin finished ninth out of the ten starters. Terry Houston won the feature race that combined Stock Cars, southeast Iowa Hobby Stocks and Quincy Hobby Stocks while Beau Heavelow topped a nine-car field of Mini-Sprints. Obviously the track was disappointed with the low turnout, especially on such a perfect autumn day for racing, as they have cancelled the event that was previously scheduled for October 10th.
Looks like another nice week of weather coming up and there are still special events out there on the schedule, hopefully you can make it out to the track again soon!
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