During the Summer months in the southeast, namely Florida and Georgia, it has to be frustrating to be a dirt track race fan, driver or promoter as the weather usually consists of warm humid days that lead to what meteorologists call "popcorn" thundershowers. These are storms that develop quickly from the heat of the day and move very little before they rain themselves out and disappear. Exactly where they will occur is hard to predict and, once you do see them on the radar, the direction that they will move and how long they will last is completely random. If one of these storms happens to develop over your race track, you are done for the night and, if not, you are good to go so the racing crowd just has to go and take their chances.
Here in the Midwest our summer storms are usually much more predictable developing ahead of boundaries or upon waves of energy that produce lines of thunderstorms or clusters of rain that generally move from west to east at twenty or thirty miles per hour. And, with today's technology, everybody at the track can check their radar, see them coming and then react accordingly. The last four days though it has been more like we are part of the southeast. Wednesday night at Oskaloosa the radar was basically clear during the heat races and so the planned intermission went on featuring drivers in match races behind the wheel of karts from Slideways Karting Center. All of sudden it started to sprinkle, then it rained and fairly hard for a couple of minutes before letting up and moving on. A quick re-check of the radar revealed that sure enough, one tiny little cell had literally just popped up over the northwest edge of town where the Southern Iowa Speedway is located.
Friday night it rained hard enough in my hometown of Mount Pleasant to move some items around from a drainage area that only comes into play during a heavy rain, but just twenty-two miles to the south the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson stayed dry. This weather pattern continued on Saturday night and the popcorn storms were more numerous. One of them wiped out the racing following the Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductions at the Knoxville Raceway and another one created nearly an hour delay at 34 Raceway before they were able to complete their racing program. Okay Mother Nature, that's enough of this type of weather! Take us back to what we are used to here in the heart of dirt track country so that we better know what to expect when it comes to a race night and where to go!!
I would think that those fans in the southeast would be reluctant to travel very far to go racing during the summer months and that is why I am so lucky to have such a fine facility like 34 Raceway located just twenty miles from my front door. That is where I took my chances with the popcorn storms on Saturday night where weekly action in all six classes was on tap and there was a solid field of 85 cars in the pit area.
Following a candy dash that featured so much candy that kids actually left some on the track, the IMCA Sport Mods were the first feature up. Brett Timmerman started in row two and made his way to the front before Bobby Anders came calling. Racing his way to the front from the fourth row Anders made the pass of Timmerman late in the race to score the victory with Timmerman in second and Joey Gower in third. John Oliver Jr. moved from twelfth to fourth while Tony Dunker completed the top five.
The Four Cylinder feature was up next and as you looked over turn four you could see a rainbow in the sky. Yes, a pretty sight, but definitely an indicator of what was soon to come. Ron Kibbe blasted to the front from his fourth starting spot and started to put some distance on the rest of the field as they raced two and three wide for position. Veteran driver John Richardson and current All Iowa Points leader Austen Becerra soon broke from the pack and as they raced in second and third some sprinkles of rain began to fall on the speedway. With laps winding down in this twelve-lap feature Kibbe still appeared to have things well in hand, but with just three laps to go he slowed suddenly and pulled to the high side entering turn three where he would coast to a stop. As the drivers prepared for the restart the rain started to fall just a little bit harder and after a few minutes the cars were sent to the infield as Jeff Laue and his crew scrambled to get all of their track packing equipment out onto the speedway. It continued to rain lightly for another ten minutes and it then took another forty minutes to get the surface back into racing condition before the Four Cylinders returned for their final three laps.
Richardson would bring them back to green and even with his experience he was unable to hold off Becerra who just really shows that he knows the moves that it takes to win in this front wheel drive division. Becerra made that pass coming to the white flag and then pulled away over the final lap to take the win over John Richardson, Dustin Ravelin, Larry Miller and Daytona Fenton.
With the rain the track was now tacky fast and that seemed to cause the usually clean driving Stock Car field some fits as multi-car tangles negated the first two attempts at a start. With the shuffled lineup due to those two accidents, the original sixth starter Shane Watts now found himself on the front row for the third attempt at a start and he did not waste the opportunity riding the heavy cushion to the lead. Several drivers would line up behind Watts and take a shot at the leader on the low side, but when they did, and when they failed to get by Watts they were replaced by the next driver who had stayed up on the cushion. As the white flag waved it was Watts, John Oliver Jr. and Tom Bowling Jr. running in a tight draft and as they entered turn one Bowling, not willing to just settle for third. tried to kick hard off of the turn one cushion and drive to the inside. That move backfired on him though as he got a little too sideways and that allowed three cars to drive around as he scrambled to recover. Oliver took one last look to the inside in turns three and four, but there would be no stopping Watts from scoring his second career feature win. Oliver, John Brockway, Jim Lynch and Ray Raker would make up the top five while Bowling gets an "A" for effort to go along with his sixth-place purse money.
The twenty-lap IMCA Modified feature was up next and while it started out rather innocently, it would turn into a bit of a scramble at the end. Young Dugan Thye would pace the field through the opening laps, but when he hopped the cushion just a bit in turn three that allowed Tyler Glass to takeover the top spot on lap five. Thye was still in the top five on lap ten when his motor let go big time down the back stretch and as he spun in his own oil he collected Bill Roberts Jr. who wound up with considerable right side damage. It took several minutes to clean up the fluids on the track and once back to racing Glass continued to lead now with Dennis LaVeine and Jeff Waterman in hot pursuit. With three laps remaining as the leader prepared to put a lap on Darrow Lillie, the slower car shot up the track in turn three making contact with Glass and even more with LaVeine just as Collin Rothzen spun in turn two to bring out the caution. The damage to LaVeine's car was too much for him to continue as the field formed up for the restart with three laps to go. On that restart Brandon Rothzen had a big run down the back straightaway and decided to throw caution to the wind as he attempted to execute the ultimate slide job on Glass, but he came up just a couple of feet short as his left rear collided with the front of the leaders car causing the entire field to stack up in turn four. Glass was able to keep moving, but contenders Jeff Waterman and Mitch Morris were not so fortunate as Rothzen was black flagged and sent to the pits for questionable driving.
With the scramble it was now Todd Hansen and the beat up ride of Roberts that were in a position to challenge, but Tyler Glass held them off over the final three laps to celebrate his first career feature win. Hansen, who made the trip down from Muscatine for the first time this season would finish in the second spot. Roberts will use his third-place pay to help repair his damaged race car, another first-time visitor from Muscatine Levi Laymon finished in fourth while the veteran Dean McGee took fifth.
The Mod Lites were up next and while after the rain nearly everybody had preferred the top line around the speedway, young Devon Rouse decided that he would give the extreme low groove a try and it worked out nicely as he opened up a big lead. The fifteen-year-old from Burlington had just won his first feature ever here a few weeks ago and when he closed in on two slower cars late in the race he got a bit conservative and that allowed Dan Keltner to close the gap fast. As Rouse cleared the last of the traffic at the white flag Keltner pulled even on the high line, but the kid again found the bite on the bottom and was able to take the win by just a car length over Keltner. Justin Bucholz, Collin Ball and Gary Snyder rounded out the top five.
The 305 Winged Sprints were the finale and from the drop of the green it looked as though Chase Wanner had forgotten to switch out his 360 motor after competing with the Sprint Invaders at Independence the night before. The teenager from Agency was a rocket pulling away to a full half of a lap lead mid-race. And while Daniel Bergquist was able to cut into that lead considerably as traffic came into play he was still several car-lengths back as the checkers waved in this non-stop event. It was Wanner's first career feature win and he celebrated heartily with friends and family in victory lane including his father Bryan who was a many-time feature winner here in the Late Models over twenty years ago. Bergquist was a solid runner-up ahead of Justin Newberry, Shane Quam and John Schulz. Postscript: Turns out that the motor in Wanner's car actually was a 360 as that is what it pumped out at during post-race technical inspection. The disqualification handed the victory over to Daniel Bergquist and everybody else moved up a spot.
I had a good time trying to fill the time during the delay with track announcer Rich Adams and hopefully we were able to inform and even entertain a bit. A rain delay is the announcer's toughest chore as it may seem like we are only entertaining ourselves, but I still say that it is better than dead air or a radio station playing. Although you may not agree :)
I wrap up the month of May already with twenty-four nights of racing in the book! Hopefully the rest of the Summer season will be as fruitful and without the unpredictability of popcorn thunderstorms. See you on the Back Stretch!
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