It is not unusual for one of these big spring storms to wipe out a couple of nights of racing during April and that may be the case this weekend. Everything in our area was cancelled on Friday night and Saturday night promoters will be faced with a tough decision as they are probably looking at wet grounds this morning and when faced with a cool and windy forecast for the evening, pulling the plug would likely be the best business decision. It will be interesting to see who does race tonight and we hope that whoever does gets a hearty bunch of fans bundled up in the stands to enjoy the action. Sunday's weather looks a little better, although I now see that they have put in a slight chance of rain in the afternoon and evening, but hopefully we can all salvage at least one racing event this weekend. I'm looking at the possibility of heading up to Rockford for their Spring Classic that gets the green at 1 p.m. and then heading back down to the Quad City Speedway where the Deery Brothers Summer Series for IMCA Late Models will take the green at 5:30 p.m......Speaking of the Deery Series, last night's show at Davenport has been rescheduled for September 9th and will be run on the half-mile oval and tonight's race at Maquoketa has been washed out with no rescheduling as of yet. Hopefully the Series can get one race in this weekend at East Moline. After the first three events the point standings are very tight with Terry Neal leading Mark Burgtorf by just three points, but keep in mind that Burgtorf does not plan on following the entire schedule. Young Tyler Bruening is just five points behind Neal with Tom Darbyshire another point back in fourth and Justin Reed is fifth. Andy Eckrich, Colby Springsteen, Matt Strassheim and defending champion Ray Guss Jr. are next in line while Mike Murphy Jr. and Jason Perry are tied for tenth......The hottest topic from around the Midwest from last weekend was the disqualification of David Turner after he appeared to have finished second behind Chad Simpson at the MLRA show at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Missouri. Turner was involved in a couple of on track incidents during the feature, first when he "roughed up" the lapped car of Bill Koons Jr., but the one that apparently was his downfall came during a late restart when he and Brad Looney got together while trying to get to the favored bottom groove. Turner thought that he would have to restart from the rear, but officials waved him back up to second and that was where he took the checkered flag. Then, following the race, MLRA officials made the decision to penalize Turner for rough driving and scored him 24th in the final rundown. The Racin' Boys were there and have video of the incident, plus their forum board has a lively discussion on the scenario as well. After watching the video of the incident I'll stay away from the discussion of "should he have been disqualified or not" and instead chalk this up as another example of why I do not like double-file restarts. The track had locked down and was one groove around the bottom. Starting outside of the first double row Turner knew that he had to get to the bottom as soon as possible or he stood the risk of falling back even further since he, as the third-place car, was being forced to start outside of the favored groove while the fourth-place car was given the opportunity to start just behind him but in the favored groove. If you insist on having double-file restarts then do it like they have been at some southern tracks, where one-grooved tracks seem to be more common, where they put a cone out on the track while the caution is out and the drivers choose whether they want to start on the inside or outside. The leader still starts out front by himself, but the second-place, third-place and fourth-place car may all choose to start on the inside if the track is locked down on the bottom, while the fifth-place driver may then say "I'll take a chance on the outside" and can pull up to start side-by-side with the second-place car. Will it stop incidents like the one at Wheatland from happening? No, because that fifth-place guy now starting on the outside of that first double row will do everything he can to cram his way down to that bottom groove as soon as that green flag waves, but at least in this scenario he made the choice to start up there in the first place. I had two other races that I witnessed last weekend that would back up my theory that double-file restarts stink. The 305 Sprint Car feature at Burlington was running along just fine until a mid-race caution put the field into the Delaware style double-file restart alignment. The first attempt to restart saw the second-place car bobble in turn one, drive up the track and collect the field sending two of the top five competitors for a tumble. The second attempt saw a driver who was restarting at the rear after changing a tire during the red-flag try to go three-wide off of four coming to the start and in turn one he ran out of room and went for a flip. For the next start track officials decided to go single-file and the race went green-to-checkers from there. On Sunday night the UMP Modifieds at Quincy were using full double-file restarts, where the second-place car starts next to the leader, and after nine caution flags and eighteen racing laps the checkered flag flew. Were the double-file restarts to blame for all the cautions? Well, I guess I can't prove it since they never tried to go single-file. I know that I am in the minority on this one as we all love double-file restarts when they go well and do not just breed more cautions, but it is my belief that the negatives ( more time to get the field realigned, leads to more cautions, unfair to 50% of the drivers on a one-grooved track) outweigh the positives. Watch it from that standpoint the next time that you are at the track and see if you agree.
Have to go looking pretty far to get some notes on race results from last night. Veteran driver Jeff Swindell proved that he is regaining his old form by winning the preliminary night of the ASCS Spring Nationals at I-30 Speedway in Little Rock, Arkansas. Swindell led all 30-laps on the way to victory ahead of Shane Stewart, Gary Wright, Sam Hafertepe Jr. and Seth Bergman. Stewart leads the National Tour points right now followed by the old guys, Johnny Herrera and Swindell......Jason Feger set quick time and Brian Birkhofer was second fastest during qualifying for the World of Outlaws Late Model Commonwealth 100 at Virginia Motor Speedway. After the heats and B's it will be Chris Madden and Steve Francis starting from the front row for tonight's feature.....Did you know that you could have been watching live ARCA racing from Talladega at 8 a.m. this morning? I hope that my DVR is doing its job as I plan to zip through it after closing the notebook......The Modified Smackdown at the Lee County Speedway has been rescheduled for May 27th......the USMTS show that was rained out at Valley Speedway last night will be run tomorrow (Sunday) starting at 5 p.m.......Racing will always be the main topic here on the Back Stretch, but I'll throw in some other stuff once in awhile as well. This past week I heard a promo for the Mike and Mike show on ESPN Radio where they were discussing the NCAA Basketball tournament and one of them said that it was not the best way to determine a national champion since it makes the regular season irrelevant. I was shocked! I sure hope that these two are big supporters of the BCS system for football then, because if not they are about as hypocritical as you can be!......Here's hoping that we can get some racing in tonight and Sunday!
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