This is a neat little quarter-mile with long straights and tight turns located about an hour south of the St. Louis metro area and one of the few tracks in the Midwest that still runs a weekly show featuring the 410 winged sprint cars. Twenty-six winged warriors were on hand tonight with no surprises and it was nice to finally see drivers that I have only read about previously in stories and results. The one thing that did catch me off guard a bit was that the Alan Barton owned #7AB formerly driven by Brandon Wimmer and by Billy Alley at the Knoxville Nationals, had local favorite Tommy Worley Jr. at the controls. The track was quick, wide and racy during the qualifying events with plenty of action and wheelstands and it was Joey Boyd who set the quick time with a lap of 11.448.
While the sprints are the headliners here at SFCR, it was obvious that the fans love the A-Mods as well especially when Rusty Griffaw and Billy Smith waged a barn burner during the dash to determine that front half of the starting lineup for the main event. Much of the nearly full grandstand were on the edge of their seat, or up off of it as Griffaw picked up the win in this one.
All of the qualifying for the four divisions wrapped up right at 9 p.m. and the announcer told the Pure Streets that their feature would hit the track in fifteen minutes. The sixteen car field took the green at 9:16 p.m. and things went really bad from there. This had to be one of the most agonizing forty-five minutes that I have ever spent at a race track as not only was the race stopped by several cautions, but the leader Dusty Homan was never even challenged when the race was green. Even when it looked like it would be over, it wasn't as a backmarker spun in turn four as the leader was racing down the back stretch for what we thought would be the final time. The flagman started the field one more time waving both the green and the white and, of course a driver, spun out in turn one. The corner flagman in turn one started waving his caution flag, but the chief starter kept the green light on and threw the checkers even though the car that had spun in turn one started driving back toward the field heading for the exit off turn one. The frustration of the starter showed as he spiked both the checker flag and his headset as the race finally came to an end and those in the crowd who saw him do that gave him a round of applause as they too shared that frustration. My suggestion for next year would be to have either a time limit, or a number of cautions limit so that something like this does not happen again.
The twenty-lap feature for the A-Mods was up next and even though it was littered with cautions too, at least the race for the lead was very entertaining as Griffaw and Smith resumed their battle from the dash. With five laps remaining Matt Eaton made it a three-car scramble for the point and when Smith went into turn three too hard, he drove up the wall and rolled his #14 over once in turn four bringing out the red flag with three laps remaining. The crowd gave Smith quite an ovation as he was definitely putting on a show before this incident. On the restart Eaton hugged the bottom line and edged ahead of Griffaw by a nose as the two took the white flag. Griffaw had a run on Eaton down the back stretch on the final lap and he tried to slam the door on that bottom groove going into turn three, but Eaton was not to be stopped and he pulled ahead of Griffaw exiting turn four to take the win by just less than a car length at the stripe.
That was a good one and with the clock now showing 10:30 p.m. and the B-Modified feature up next I made the tough decision to hit the road for my hotel so that I could salvage five hours of sleep before doing the airport routine. I would have loved to have seen the Sprint Car feature, won from the front row by Tim Montgomery, but the order of events and the Pure Street marathon didn't allow it. Still, I will mark this facility as one that I will definitely want to visit again!
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