Trucks On Dirt, No More "Truck Motors" and The Open Trailer Nationals

Some random thoughts on a Wednesday in late July….

After four straight nights of racing last week that included just over 1,000 miles of driving I am taking a rest before the start of Southern Iowa Sprint Speedweeks. I might try to catch the features at Columbus Junction Thursday night following some business in Iowa City, but otherwise my next venture to the track will be on Thursday August 1^st for the opening night of the Arnold Motor Supply 360 Nationals at the Knoxville Raceway.

Speculation is that tonight’s Mudsummer Classic at the Eldora Speedway will be the best attended and will draw the highest television ratings ever for the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series. I know that I have my DVR set for tonight on SPEED and I just hope that it doesn’t turn into a caution-fest. I see that a lot of my dirt racing friends on The Facebook (I disagreed with Justin Timberlake, they should have kept the “The”) are already finding fault with the announcing crew and their lack of knowledge and terms for the surface. Give it a rest folks, we have live dirt track racing on television on a Wednesday, I could care less what the announcers say, or don’t say. The ladies from The View could be giving the call as far as I’m concerned, I’m tuned in to watch the race!

Social media sucks, especially Twitter. Just ask Aaron Rodgers whom I believe now owes a year’s salary to his followers, or to just one guy that he beat down when he swore that Ryan Braun was clean.

Back to Eldora, drivers such as Kyle Larson, Scott Bloomquist, Dave Blaney, Ryan Newman and Jeff Babcock are being listed as “dirt ringers”. Of course the Dillon boys, Austin and Ty, have done plenty of dirt track racing as well during their rise to stardom and then you have drivers like Matt Crafton who picked up a ride in a dirt Modified earlier this year so that he could get some experience for tonight’s race. One driver that is not being mentioned is Justin Jennings out of LaGrange, Missouri, who raced an IMCA Late Model on dirt for a full season a couple of years ago at the Quincy Raceway. Quincy and Eldora, not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison, but I am thinking that Jennings may have a good showing tonight.

Brandon Sheppard became the youngest driver ever to win the UMP Summer Nationals point title and, on the strength of that “B-Shepp” is also the current UMP Late Model National point leader. Brian Shirley was the 2012 Hell Tour champ and then parlayed that into a national title and Sheppard will now try to do the same. Look for him to now be a Sunday night regular at the Quincy Raceway where you will also likely see other UMP national points contenders in both the Late Models and the Modifieds blow in from time to time as the track is the only Sunday night sanctioned option in the region.

The Summer Nationals was too long this year. The schedule needs to be shortened by a week or two, but how does UMP decide what tracks to drop off the schedule?

My friend Kevin Trittien had an interesting idea as we watched the Hawkeye Dirt Tour event at the Southern Iowa Speedway last week. Noting a couple of Tour events that had drawn low car counts “TapFan” suggested that the HDT should do something similar to the Dakota Modified Tour. Perhaps take one Saturday to Saturday date range during early June (or in July, or late May, or…) and run eight straight nights at tracks within the state of Iowa with the schedule setup where the itinerary is sensible and does not have the drivers zig-zagging back and forth. Stock Cars, Sport Mods, Hobby Stocks, any or all could also be run as part of the series with their own point fund(s) pending sponsorship. Might be something that IMCA would want to look into for 2014…..

Colleague Ryan Clark’s pet peeve is when IMCA Modifieds and IMCA Sport Mods are referred to as A-Mods and B-Mods. As for me, I have grown weary of the term “truck motor” as one driver’s rant in early May has seemed to forever label the IMCA Modified crate motor as such. With the growing success of the crate combo I am interested to see how the driver’s list shakes out for the 7^th Annual World Nationals at the Marshalltown Speedway on September 20^th and 21^st where no crate motors (not truck motors) will be allowed.

Since it is now vogue to run an event that excludes drivers based upon the type of equipment they use, perhaps it is now time to bring to reality an event that the Kemp brothers, Kevin, Dusty & Clay and I kicked around a long time ago; The Open Trailer Nationals. No enclosed trailers allowed and no making the switch just prior to the event. We would recruit and post spies at all of the region’s race tracks early in the season and they would report to us who has pulled to the track in an enclosed trailer. That driver would then be added to the ineligible list for that year’s event. My wife and I were driving to a wedding in Burlington late Saturday afternoon and while I noticed the unidentified enclosed haulers making their way toward 34 Raceway west of town, not until we saw the #69s Modified of Quienten Schoffner on an open trailer did she say “hey, are they racing at 34 tonight?”. Geesh Christine, it is a Saturday night in July, how long have you been married to me?? Just goes to show the marketing power of an open trailer…..

The CJ Speedway should have its own forum page on IowaStockCars..... Or there needs to be a page added titled “Other Tracks”.

Who will be in the Buffalo Wild Wings #82 for the two weeks of Nationals at Knoxville? Clint Garner drove it this past Saturday night in the 410 division while driving his own #40 in the 360’s. Garner’s season has just been too strong for him to switch seats for the 360 Nationals and I would think that the 82 Team would like to have one driver to work with for both weeks. Who knows, maybe we will get the answer this Saturday night for the final weekly tune up at the Speedway.

If you are a Sprint Car fan Positively Racing is the place to look for coverage of the Knoxville Raceway over the coming weeks with Eric Arnold’s View From the Stands, Morgan Broeg’s Open Wheel News and Notes, as well as right here on the Back Stretch. No, you won’t find live video, tweets of car numbers following each race or even live blogging here, but you will find a full recap of the previous night’s events as well as some news and notes that we pick up along the way. Hard to believe that just a few short years ago this was the high speed method of delivering news and results. Now we are becoming the “racing papers” of the internet. Oh well, as long as people want more than just the results, we’ll be here…..

I may be taking some time off this week, but here’s hoping that you will get out and support the track of your choice. There is plenty of racing action to be found around the area starting tonight and running all the way through the weekend, so get on out and enjoy. And, with the weather feeling like it is already September, that is just a cruel reminder that we are on the downhill side of the 2013 racing schedule. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you on the Back Stretch!