Thursday, January 5, 2012

News Out of Bloomfield and Memphis and an Orange Bowl Beat Down

News out of two tracks in the tri-state area surfaced this morning on the forums at Heartland Motorsports. Former Modified driver Chris Eggers and his wife Cindy announced that they will be promoting weekly Saturday night races at the Bloomfield Speedway in 2012 beginning on April 14th. Modifieds, Sport Mods, Stock Cars, Hobby Stocks and Sport Compacts will compete weekly while the Knoxville rules 305 Sprint cars will make a few appearances during the season as well.

Chris gave me a call this morning and, after coming close to securing the reigns at Bloomfield before, you can tell that he is very excited to now have the opportunity to bring weekly racing back to the 3/8-mile oval on the Davis County Fairgrounds. He plans to run the IMCA-type rules and is looking forward to speaking with Brett Root about possibly sanctioning at least some of the weekly classes. With Oskaloosa running on Wednesday nights and Donnellson on Fridays, an IMCA sanction would give the Ottumwa/Bloomfield area drivers the opportunity to run for points three nights a week without traveling more than 75 miles one-way. It will be interesting to see what develops there.

There is also a post in the Scotland County Speedway forum this morning by Brandon Savage asking what kind of driver support he would get if the track would run a four to six night schedule in 2012. A Spring Special, the Fair race, the Fall Nationals and perhaps a couple more events would be contested on the 3/8-mile oval on the historic fairgrounds in Memphis, Missouri, if Savage receives positive feedback on the plan. The young Modified driver from Keokuk put on the promoter’s hat for the first time this past October and wore it well for the two night Fall Nationals program. He would plan on running a rules package similar to that event that allowed “open” and IMCA legal Modifieds to compete together. And in fact it was an IMCA car that swept both nights with J.D. Auringer taking the wins.

It was interesting that news from both tracks broke on the same day and it will be fun to watch the forums as everybody weighs in. I have enjoyed the racing over the years at both tracks and it is good to see that they won’t be pushing up weeds all year!

The 2012 dirt track season officially kicks off this weekend with the Annual Ice Bowl at the Talladega Short Track in Alabama. It looks like the unseasonably warm temps that we are seeing today will stick around down there as well, but it may be a little wet around the edges. This is an event that I have been able to attend five times and it is amazing the number of cars that it will draw in no matter what the conditions.

And speaking of drawing in cars no matter what the conditions, I am looking forward to seeing how the first ever “Break Ice, Not Hearts 50” goes at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson. The Four Cylinders will be running for $1,000-to-win on Saturday February 11th in the southeast corner of Iowa and you just never know, it might be sixty degrees and sunny just like it is here on January 5th. Hobby Stocks will run as well if they get enough entries.

Did you watch the Orange Bowl last night? West Virginia had 63 points on the board with more than nine minutes left in the third quarter! Coach Dana Holgorsen took the foot off the gas but a fourth quarter touchdown allowed the Mountaineers to set a new all-time bowl scoring record in their 70-33 win over Clemson. Since Holgorsen started learning his spread-style of offense in my huddle as the kids of Linden Heights played football in the vacant lot behind my parents home here in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, I took great pride in my contribution to the sport. Actually, since Dana was only about four or five at the time we would just send him deep on every play so that he would be out of the way. But the big kids had a heart, so the little guys would get to carry it once in awhile and we would always act like we couldn’t tackle them so they could score every time. It almost looked like Clemson was doing the same last night.

The first draft of the Special Events schedule is up on the Calendar page. Happy New Year, racing is only a few weeks away!!

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