Late race passes in both features Saturday night sent the large crowd home abuzz as the Knoxville Raceway perfectly set the stage for the start of the Southern Iowa Sprint Speedweek. Clint Garner and Dusty Zomer did Sioux Falls proud and found themselves in victory lane on Candi's Flowers night at the famous dirt oval.
The fifteen-lap main event for the 360's was the first to be run and the initial start was waved off when fast qualifier Tasker Phillips spun in turn one on the opening lap. On the second try at a start pole-sitter Gregg Bakker jumped to a sizable lead with Dennis Moore Jr. doing his best to keep up. The caution waved again on lap three when Ryan Anderson lost a battle with the turn four guardrail and Bakker's leaded was wiped away for the restart. That didn't matter though as Bakker again opened up a big gap on the field when racing resumed. Clint Garner had started eighth and was working his way forward moving past Moore for second with less than five laps remaining. With Bakker working lapped traffic, Garner was cutting into his lead a bit but was still well back as Bakker exited turn four looking for the checkered flag. Instead he saw yellow as Jack Dover was coasting around the topside near the guardrail of turns one and two. What was to be a clear victory for Bakker with just a straightaway left to go would now have to be defended in a green-white-checkered restart.
Back to green Garner went to the middle of turns one and two and pulled even with Bakker, then in turns three and four that same groove allowed Clint to complete the pass. Bakker drove hard into turn one on the final lap trying to reclaim what had been taken away from him by the caution, but could not find the grip he needed and Garner secured the victory. Bakker had to be disappointed with second, Moore Jr. was steady in third, Billy Alley was consistent as he started fifth and finished fourth while Chad Humston took fifth after starting sixth.
360 Notes.....A nice field of forty cars were on hand for the final tune up before the Arnold Motor Supply Knoxville 360 Nationals that will run this coming Thursday, Friday and Saturday night. New visitors included Oregon's Roger Crockett who started thirteenth and finished eighth in the A-Main. Arizona transplant Calvin Landis who raced out of Knoxville in the 410 division for many years drove a team car to Glendale Arizona's Joshua Williams. Landis was second quick in qualifying and finished the feature in the same position that he started it, in eleventh. Henry Van Dam of Enumclaw Washington drove another Ingalls #91, one of Dusty Zomer's cars, and made the show as the final transfer out of the B-Main barely holding off Chad Heimbaugh. Aussie Brad Foster was also in action but did not make the main event.......Jack Dover had made a big move before his race changing caution. "The Gasman" had started sixteenth and was up to eighth before he slowed passing under the white flag......Jordan Boston made a big move around the cushion of one and two on the opening lap going from 22nd to 14th, but he did not advance any further taking 13th at the finish due to Dover's DNF.
The racing in the 410 division had been fantastic all night with the first two heat races featuring a battle for the lead that had the crowd to the edge of their seat through the eight-lap contests. The first heat was a shootout between Tyler Walker and Ricky Logan that saw Logan come back to snare the lead and the win away from Walker off turn four of the final lap. Little did we know at the time how this would foreshadow events later in the night. And in the second heat Robby Wofgang used every inch of the track to try to hold off Kerry Madsen only to have "The Mad Man" slip by him in the final turn to take the win.
Moving ahead to feature time, the twenty-lap headliner got of to a slow start with cautions waving for incidents at the back of the pack on the first two attempts to set the race in motion. On the third try Dusty Zomer would lead laps one and two from his pole position start only to have the caution wave again for rookie 410 competitor A.J. Moeller. That was the final caution though as the remaining 18-laps went green and an entertaining 18-laps they were. On all three starts of the race, recent King's Royal champion Tyler Walker had vaulted from sixth to third and with the restart he quickly closed in on Zomer. With Dusty working the bottom and the California kid up on the cushion, Walker's line proved better and he drove into the lead on lap seven. As it looked like Walker would drive away with this one our attention turned to what was another of the night's many stories.
On the opening lap of the first heat, Mark Dobmeier and fast qualifier Bronson Maeschen tangled in turn one with both cars going for a nasty ride that knocked down a section of a billboard above the guardrail in turn two. Dobmeier's crew went to work when the Hewitt's wrecker dropped off the messed up #13 and they had it ready to run in time for the B-Main. Not only did they have it ready to run, they had it ready to fly as Dobmeier dominated the B-Main and then on the opening lap of the feature he moved from 19th to 11th. The North Dakota driver's charge to the front continued and he was up to fifth with five laps remaining perhaps the fastest car on the track at that point and hoping for a caution to see if he could prove it. By now though, the half straightaway lead enjoyed by Tyler Walker over Dusty Zomer was starting to shrink so the attention was put back up front as "Zoom Zoom" was making one last run.
With two laps to go Zomer was in striking distance and as the white flag waved the crowd was on their feet as Zomer made a run at Walker down the back stretch. Zomer stayed glued to the bottom of turn three and found the bite that he need out of four to complete the pass and nip Walker by a little more than a car-length in the thrilling finish. Brian Brown was making up some ground on the lead duo as well, but had to settle for third after starting in the fourth row. Lynton Jeffrey, who started next to Brown, finished just behind him in fourth and Kevin Swindell got back around Dobmeier late to take fifth. Hats off to Mark Dobmeier and his crew on salvaging a sixth-place run after the hard crash to start the night. Kerry Madsen was seventh, point leader Danny Lasoski was eighth with Austin McCarl and Don Droud Jr. rounding out the top ten.
410 Notes.......Thirty-three cars were in the pits tonight as the count grows leading up to next Saturday's All Star Circuit of Champions event and then the 51st running of the Goodyear Knoxville Nationals August 10th through the 13th......The third heat saw an unusual incident after the checkered flag waved. Ian Madsen and Dusty Zomer had finished one-two with Ben Gregg a bit back in third. As the top two cars slowed down the back stretch after the checkers Gregg stayed on the gas and then tried to avoid them hitting the guardrail and rolling hard ending his night......Rookie-of-the-Year contender J.D. Johnson was running in the third transfer position in the B-Main before he blasted the turn two guardrail and rolled......Another pair of incidents in the heats led to an interesting comment during intermission and I will do my best to describe them here with facts only. The initial start of the second heat was waved off when it appeared that sixth-starting Danny Lasoski stepped out of nose-to-tail formation behind fourth starting Austin McCarl. The field was warned by starter Doug Clark and they restarted in the original order. In the fourth heat sixth-starting Terry McCarl definitely stepped out of nose-to-tail formation and the start was waved off. Clark then pulled the black flag and sent McCarl back one row to the tail of the field for the restart. During intermission McCarl was one of the drivers scheduled to come to the grandstands to sign autographs and pit announcer Mike Roberts took the opportunity to interview T-Mac about his annual stint as a promoter with the Front Row and Ultimate Challenge events coming to Oskaloosa on August 8th and 9th. At the end of the interview McCarl said "I don't know about the rest of you, but I thought that was a bogus call by Doug Clark." Roberts let it drop at that and, since both Austin and Terry had qualified out of their heats anyway, and given the fact that under tonight's qualifying procedures it didn't matter where you finished in your heat as long as you were in the top five, I thought that perhaps McCarl was just chiding Clark in a good-natured manner giving the many, many nights that they have raced and flagged together. However, as Terry walked back across the track and under the flagstand a few minutes later, that did not appear to be the case given the body language by each observed from many yards away. Ah, nothing like a little controversy to spice up the onset of the two Nationals weeks!
As Morgan and I were walking out at the end of the night you could tell that everybody else around us felt the same way. This was a night of racing that makes you count the days until you can come back and it is now only four days away until Thursday, the opening night of the 360 Nationals at Knoxville! Bookmark us if you are looking for this type of coverage at Knoxville as we plan on being at all eight nights of racing here over the next two weeks.
Next up though will be a pair of Late Model events as the PCRA Crate Late Models join the regular program tonight (Sunday) at the Quincy Raceway, then on Tuesday night the Deery Brothers Summer Series for IMCA Late Models returns to the Cedar County Raceway in Tipton. Hope to see you at the track soon!
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