Discovering A New Track Highlights A Great Father's Day Weekend

With my youngest son Morgan living in Tulsa, plans were made for a Father’s Day weekend road trip to Oklahoma revolving around a visit to a track that is getting rave reviews. The Salina Highbanks Speedway is about a forty-five minute drive from Tulsa, just east of Pryor and Morgan has said that we needed to go there since he saw an ASCS National Series race there last season. The speedway has also been talked about often in high regard by Scott Traylor of the Racin’ Boys so, with a Late Model show sanctioned by both MARS and NCRA on the schedule for Saturday night June 15^th, plans were made and I was excited to make my first-visit to this high-speed facility.

After going racing for three nights in a row mid-week (Tipton, Oskaloosa and Eldon) I wanted to continue that string possibly stretching it to six in a row by hitting a track on the way down Friday night and then stopping at Quincy on the way home. Friday’s stop would depend on when I would be able to get off work with three possibilities not too far off my route. I saw several cars on their way to Callaway Raceway in Fulton as I drove past it around 5:30 and I could have caught the whole show at the Dallas County Speedway in Urbana if I would taken a slight detour to the west. My target now though was “The Grand Ol’Lady”, the Monett Speedway tucked down in the southwest corner of Missouri and my GPS showed that I would arrive at the track around 8:30, definitely in time to catch all of the feature races and still leave me with just under two more hours of driving to get to Tulsa afterwards.

Never trust a GPS. My Garmin had the speedway listed in the “Arena/Tracks” section and so I followed the route provided that led me straight to the driveway of a very nice farm house approximately twenty-seven miles east of the town of Monett. Thanks Garmin!

Thankfully Barry Johnson had provided me with an updated issue of the National Speedway Directory last year so I pulled it out, punched in the track’s street address and I pulled into the parking lot at 9:15, just as the intermission was wrapping up with an on track interview of current OCRS Sprint Car series point leader Harli White. The young lady is making a name for herself as an up-and-coming driver in the sprint car ranks and she definitely knows how to handle herself in an interview as she prepared to start twelfth in the nights main event as the Oil Capital Racing Series made their one appearance at the track in 2013 giving the Late Models the night off.

USRA A-Modifieds were the first feature on the track with Johnny Bone Jr. going the distance to beat a short field of twelve cars. The Pro Four division was up next, a class that I believe to be unique to this track with about fourteen three-quarter-sized Late Models and Modifieds competing together. The Sprint Car feature followed and, while White was able improve her position by a few spots, it was another young lady who earned her way to victory lane as Kacee Frazier scored her first win in a sprint car. Frazier lost her lead mid-race when young Chance Morton got around her in traffic, but Frazier turned the tables on Morton late in the race to capture the win.

The OCRS Sprint Cars run smaller wings and the steel block engines have a maximum of 368 c.i. displacement. The series is based out of Oklahoma and four events on their 2013 schedule run without the wings. The Monett event drew twenty cars and had I not visited their website prior, the only two names that I would have recognized were “Oklahoma Danny” Smith and Brian McClelland who finished third and fifth respectively. With some young talent on display it will definitely be a series that I pay a little closer attention to going forward.

The USRA B-Mod feature followed the Sprint Cars and after watching Shawn Strong win that one in a flag-to-flag fashion I decided to get back on the road to Tulsa rather than watching the Pure Stocks finish out the evening. This was my third time to watch racing at Monett with my last visit here as the announcer for a USMTS event about ten years ago.

While parts of Missouri saw up to ten inches of rain on Saturday, the rain was more scattered around the Tulsa area. We watched the radar all afternoon and each time it looked like Salina would soon be in the clear, additional development to the south and west would pop up and as the day went on it looked like we would need to find other non-racing plans for the evening. A couple of calls to the track late in the afternoon brightened our mood though as the show was still a “go” and at six o’clock we started our drive excited to see the Late Models on the highbanks. As we drove past the now shuttered Will Rogers Raceway near Claremore we started talking about where all of the mini-sprint racing in Oklahoma now takes place so again that copy of the National Speedway Directory came out and as I started turning the pages to Oklahoma we noted that we were now on wet pavement that had puddles on the shoulder. It had obviously just rained here and as we drove into Pryor we made one more call to the track to learn that this latest shower had forced them to cancel for the evening.

As Morgan turned the car back toward Tulsa I made a call to the Port City Raceway to see if they might still be holding their Saturday night events and sure enough they were still on. I gave Morgan the track’s address and he noted that this would only be about five miles from the campus of the University of Tulsa where he had spent the past four years. As we made our way into the parking lot we were surprised at just how full it was and as we walked toward the ticket gate we were amazed at how jam-packed the pit area was with 195 cars in six divisions. With the on and off rain throughout the day the 1/6-mile black dirt track was wet and heavy and hot laps were just concluding at 7:30. As the drivers meeting took place it started raining again and if not for some sun peeking through the clouds to the west we would have thought that this track too would soon be a casualty to the weather.

Morgan and I have seen mini-sprints before, but always as a unique support class for a special event being held at a track meant for full-sized cars. And every time that I can remember seeing the division it seemed like the car count was lacking and there was always one or two cars that completely dominated, so quite frankly I have never become a fan of the division. That all changed tonight!

Hot laps wrap up under threatening skies at the Port City Raceway

There was no shortage of cars as all six divisions needed to have at least one B-Main to get down to the sixteen-car starting field for the feature events and the racing throughout the evening was spectacular with no clear cut favorites. The announcer was somewhat difficult to hear and, or understand so we did not catch all of the names and hometowns so the only driver’s name that we had some familiarity with was Jonathan Beason.

The Junior Sprint division had drivers, boys and girls, who looked to be in an age range of ten and below and we were impressed with just how hard and clean these kids raced throughout the evening. Some very nice people around us filled us in on the differences of the remaining classes that included A Class, Restricted, Sportsman, Outlaw and Non-Wing, the one division that we had no trouble distinguishing, with drivers ranging in age from young teenagers all the way up to the gray-haired set. Pictured to the left are the drivers who finished first and second in the first Junior Sprint heat race of the night. Heat races were run off in a rapid fire fashion and we wondered just what the heck was going on when several young fans made their way out of the grandstands and down near the fence on the front stretch during intermission. Obviously a group dance for the kids is held each race night and these kids were more than ready to put on a show for the large crowd.

B-Mains followed the dance session and finally the lineups were set for the six feature races. The Junior Sprint winner came from deep in the pack after winning a B-Main and we were greatly impressed with the driving skills of Jason Tracy who had to come from mid-pack to win both the A Class and the Non-Wing features. The Outlaw main event closed out the evening and even though it was now one in the morning we left the Port City Raceway extremely pleased with what we had discovered and with Morgan kicking himself for not knowing that this track had been so close to his college home for the past four years. He vowed to come back often.

Young fans were more than ready for the Chicken Dance at intermission

My plans for Sunday night racing were scrubbed when the heavy rains from the night before left the Quincy Raceways too wet to go and, for me at least, that was probably a good thing as my pretty wife had told me that I needed to be home for a dinner party anyway. Dinner was spectacular, a perfect cap to a great Father’s Day weekend for this proud dad who is again looking forward to three straight nights of weekday racing this week. Tuesday night the Deery Brothers Summer Series and Stock Cars will be in action at the West Liberty Raceway. Wednesday night I will have to decide between my regular stop at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa that will also include the IMCA Late Models this week, or the UMP Summer Nationals event at the Spoon River Speedway near Canton, Illinois. Then on Thursday night it will be Budweiser/Golden Eagle Distributing night at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson featuring the Brockway Mechanical and Roofing Sprint Invaders along with the Hawkeye Dirt Tour for IMCA Modifieds. Hope to see you on the Back Stretch!

I will be checking the results as soon as they are posted to see just who was running the Hawkeye car in Tulsa