A "near miss" involving the two leaders nearly a full straightaway ahead of him was exactly what Chris Simpson needed to erase that gap and make a late pass for victory in race number two of the 2011 Corn Belt Clash Late Model series Wednesday night. Brad Dierks and Brett Diercks were also winners on an absolutely perfect night for racing at the Cedar County Raceway in Tipton.
The Simpson brothers, Chad and Chris, earned the front row starting spots for the thirty-five-lap Late Model headliner and, after running the first lap side-by-side, Chad established himself as the leader and began to pull away. As the defending champion of the Corn Belt Clash, and having done so in a dominant fashion including a victory at this track last August, Chad appeared well on his way to victory when the caution waved on lap fourteen for Jason Jaggers who had slipped off the top side of the track. Despite there being twenty-one laps remaining I noted several people gathering up their stuff and heading for the exits as the field was realigned, a decision that those folks will regret if they read this or any other account of what Paul Harvey would call "the rest of the story".
On the restart Chad would again open up a lead, but it was now Denny Eckrich who was giving chase in second and he kept the leader well within striking distance. Ten laps into the run Eckrich began to close the gap and by lap twenty-six he was ready to make his challenge for the lead. Jaggers, a UMP Late Model winner already this season from Wyanet, Illinois, would again figure into the outcome as he ran just ahead of the leaders as they went side-by-side out of turn two. With Jaggers moving to the very bottom groove into three, neither Eckrich or Simpson wanted to give up ground so they both stayed in the throttle longer than usual running door-to-door as they flew around Jaggers to the outside. As the two contenders now pitched their rides sideways to scrub off that extra speed Eckrich, in the lower line, got all the way sideways and made an amazing save to keep from stalling his car while Simpson recovered nicely as well and tried to get back up to speed as quickly as possible. Chris Simpson was running third and was just exiting turn two when this sequence of events started to unfold and by the time he came off of turn four he was now in second and closing in quickly on brother Chad.
The lead went from five car lengths to four then to three as it was obvious that the rhythm and momentum that Chad had enjoyed earlier was either now gone or transferred to Chris who now had checkers on his mind. With two laps to run Chris took a peek to the outside of Chad in turns one and two, then he made his move in three and four to drive around the outside of Chad for the lead as the white flag waved. Chad made one last effort driving his #25 deep into turn one, but he could not make it stick and Chris pulled away for a thrilling victory in front of a large crowd. Chad would have to settle for second on this night, Denny Eckrich recovered nicely for third, Jason Rauen was solid in fourth and Dave Eckrich filled out the top five.
Open Modifieds provided an excellent preliminary twenty-five-lap feature race to get the crowd ready for the Late Models. Scot Fridley and Ryan Dolan started side-by-side on the front row and that is pretty much how they ran the first lap before Fridey spun to the infield in turn two the second time around. Dolan, the defending All Iowa Points champion and current Modified point leader, tried to pull away on the restart but he soon had Brad Dierks in hot pursuit. Dierks started eighth and used the low line to perfection to move to the front and on lap fourteen he eased past Dolan for the point. Ryan was not about to give in though and the track showed its versatility as Dolan's high line was fast coming off of turn two while Dierks' lower line had the bite off of turn four. Even though Dierks was scored as the leader for the next four circuits, it was Dolan who was ahead halfway down the back stretch each time and when Dierks had to step up off of the bottom to get around Jarrett Franzen, Dolan was again scored as the leader on laps eighteen and nineteen. There was no stopping Dierks though as charged right back to the front on lap twenty and he actually stayed out front all the way around the quarter-mile for the final five laps to take the win. Dolan would finish in the second spot with Mike Burbridge third, Bruce Hanford was fourth and Chris Zogg took fifth. Noah Coppes was the hard charger in this one as he started fifteenth after winning the B-Main and moved up to sixth at the checkers.
Brett Diercks passed Hal Russell mid-race to win the Legend Car feature event. Adam Bell finished second while Dominic Bates was third.
CCR CBC Notes......Thirty-one Late Models, twenty-four Modifieds and seventeen Legend cars made for a pretty full pit area.....Jason Rauen ran from eighth to second in the third Late Model heat race confirming once again that he is one of my favorite drivers to watch as he always runs "Hammer Down".....North Dakota driver Dustin Hapka came up one spot short of transferring out of the first B-Main......With names like Moss, Webb, Hansen and Klinkkammer all running in the second B-Main I couldn't help but to think back to times long passed when it was Johnny, Gary, Curt and Mike (the elder one) racing around the half-mile in West Liberty on Saturday night. Back to the present it was Rob Moss taking the win while Bobby Hansen and young Mike Klinkkammer did not finish. The eight-time All Iowa Points champion, with his first title coming thirty-one years ago in 1980, Gary Webb was edged out at the line by Minnesotan Andrew McKay for the final transfer position.....The start of the feature was later delayed for several minutes as McKay could not get his car fired. He joined the field just as the green flag was ready to be waved.....Jill George was the CBC provisional starter and when the field stacked up in front of her coming to the start she was actually stopped sideways in the middle of the back stretch when the green flag waved. With twenty-four Late Models soon to be coming her way Jill calmly refired her #22 and drove away allowing the race to stay green......Iowastockcars.com is one of my favorite forum boards to follow as, for the most part, the conversations stay informative and positive, but a couple of posters had some deleting to do when they got home last night in order to preserve credibility as both Brian Birkhofer and twelve-year-old Jake Griffin were "strongly rumored" to be on their way to Tipton tonight......Mike Burbridge was the last car to arrive making the drive down from Delhi and he finished third in the Modified main event......Donovan Lodge put his Modified back in the trailer before hot laps.....I don't see the Legend cars often, perhaps once or twice a year, so I am not familiar with most of them however I did recognize the names of former Late Model driver Ron Boyse, former Modified driver Adam Bell and regular Four Cylinder race winner Tyler Kelley.....I spotted SPI crewmembers Jerry Mackey, Doug Haack and Larry Bontz enjoying a night off and a view from the grandstands. You can find Larry's column in the Hawkeye Racing News.....I enjoyed sitting with fellow blogger Brian Neal who was keeping his Twitter followers up-to-date on the results as the night played out. And it was great to have Ryan Clark on the mic for the Late Model potion of the show......A big thanks to Al and Kathy Dlouhy for their hospitality and to their entire crew for putting on an excellent mid-week program that wrapped up at ten minutes before ten o'clock!......The Corn Belt Clash moves to the Fayette County Speedway in West Union tonight and then on north to the Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Fountain City, Wisconsin on Friday.
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