47 Good Nights

My Holiday season tradition here on the Back Stretch has been to summarize the previous racing season. This tradition started long ago when it was in news print, however now that my ramblings are in this blog format you as the reader can easily go back through previous entries to get a feel for where I have been, and what kind of racing that I was able to see. So no reason to “recap” the season other than to offer up some statistics and express some general thoughts.

Much of April, May and June was washed away, but then we went dry here in the Midwest and very few events were lost over the final half of the season. I was able to take in 47 nights of racing in 2011, tying my record low race count since I picked up my driver’s license in March of 1979. Those 47 events were seen at 19 tracks in four different states; Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and Missouri. As usual I spent the most nights, 13, at the Knoxville Raceway while 34 Raceway near Burlington was next in line this year with six nights. I spent five race nights at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson while I made three races each at the tracks in Vinton, Tipton and Oskaloosa. I tried to go to Quincy four times, but lost two of them to rain before the first green flag flew and I went to one night each at Belleville IL, Rockford IL, I-80 Speedway (Greenwood NE), Farley, Maquoketa, East Moline IL, Bloomfield, Columbus Junction, Sedalia MO, Dubuque and Memphis MO. My one and only new track this year was the St. Francois County Raceway in Farmington, Missouri.

Special events dominated my race schedule this season with the Deery Brothers Summer Series for IMCA Late Models leading the way with six nights. This year’s Knoxville Nationals were sanctioned by the World of Outlaws so that gave me four nights of them while I caught three United States Modified Touring Series events. I saw two shows each of the MOWA Sprints, the Lucas Oil Late Models, the Corn Belt Clash Late Models, the ASCS National Tour, and the USAC Sprint Cars. And I saw one events each of the following; Big 8 Late Models, Mid-American Stock Series, IRA Sprint Cars, ASCS Midwest Sprints, UMP Summer Nationals, the PCRA Crate Late Models, the All Star Sprints, the MLRA Late Models and the ASCS Warrior Region Sprints.

For the most part the racing that I saw this season was very entertaining with decent car counts and well-run shows. While some tracks may still have issues, it appears to me that most promoters have bought in to the concept of running their shows off in a timely and efficient manner as I saw more tracks using the one-spin-and-your-in rule than ever before and I do not recall any intermissions that seemed to drag on forever this season. Two of my favorites promoted their final races this season as Ralph Capitani retired at Knoxville and Terry Hoenig sold his lease at the Lee County Speedway. Toby Kruse is a great choice to fill Capitani’s role and with track announcer Dewain Hulett named as Lee County’s promoter by new owners Dave & Yvonne Sapp, all should remain well in Donnellson.

With Oskaloosa being a regular stop on my schedule each year I am hoping that somebody will continue Wednesday night racing there and hopefully racing will be held on a regular basis in some manner at Eldon, Bloomfield and Memphis in 2012. I do know that I am excited about seeing UMP Late Models on Sunday nights in Quincy next year and it is always interesting to see where the series and tours will be visiting when their schedules are released. Tipton has been a track that has been running a little bit of everything lately and doing it well and the IMCA event on Knoxville’s schedule in April has my attention. Only four more months until another racing season!