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| A little wine and relaxation on a Sunday afternoon near Defiance, Missouri |
In 1982 when I was nineteen years old promoter Larry Kemp hired me to take care of the stories, results and points at 34 Raceway in Burlington. For twenty-five dollars a night it was my job to get a story written, including the full agate style results, and send it out to the news media as soon as possible so that the track could get good coverage from the local newspapers and radio stations along with the racing publications at the time such as Hawkeye Racing News and Speed Sport. Computers were just starting to evolve at the time so I used an electric typewriter and a great new thing called a fax machine in order to spread the news and to help promote the race track. After all, letting people know who won and how they did it is a very vital part of attracting race fans for future events.
If a show got over early enough I would hustle home (20 miles), write the story and send it out before going to bed that night in order to meet the local paper's deadline, but more often than not I would chase some girls in the pits after the races, get home too late and would instead write it up and send it out before noon on Sunday. That was how tracks did it in the "old days", so why is it that now in the age of Twitter, Facebook and Speednet do some tracks make it such a low priority to get their results out in any kind of a timely manner? They use those first two, plus internet racing forums, to "promote" the hell out of an upcoming event, but then afterwards nothing. Here it is Tuesday afternoon and I am still looking for results from two tracks that raced this past weekend and from one track in Missouri that has now had two weeks of racing with no results to be found. Perhaps someone is out chasing girls in the pits......but for two or three days??? Maybe they are better at catching them than I was.
I enjoy reading Ron Meyer's "The Rest of the Dirt" blog and I get a kick out of it when he compares his ballot in the Dirt On Dirt Late Model Top 25 poll to how the poll actually came out that week. As one of the other twenty-nine people who are invited to send in a ballot each week I usually prefer not to share how I voted as I am sure that my way of doing it is probably not the same as most, but when DoD's Michael Rigsby said the following about Randy Weaver on Monday I wanted to offer up my own opinion.
There are some that will grumble and say this hasn't been "against the best" competition in the country, etc., but the fields that he is beating are still very strong. It's not Lucas Oil or World of Outlaws every night, but he's doing it against strong enough competition that he's the clear-cut number one driver in the country right now, and it's not even close in my opinion.
No grumbling from this voter, I just don't agree that Weaver is "Number 1" despite the fact that he has eight wins in eight starts this season and the main reason for that is mentioned in the quote above. He is not racing against top tier competition and he is running events where the feature race lineup is almost solely based upon qualifying times. Set fast time, start on the pole of the feature, lead flag-to-flag, never have to competitively pass anybody for position, pick up the check at the end of the night and go home. I have watched video of most of Weaver's wins so far and I cannot recall one where he actually had to pass anybody other than a lapped car. And no, it is "not Lucas Oil or World of Outlaws every night", in fact it has not been Lucas Oil or World of Outlaws ANY night so far until perhaps this weekend when Weaver is expected to run with the Outlaws at Smoky Mountain Speedway on Saturday night. If he goes out and beats them this weekend I may have to reevaluate where I have him ranked right now, but then again Chris Ferguson swept the Outlaws this weekend in their North Carolina doubleheader so does that mean that I would have to bump him all the way up to second as well?
Ranking Weaver number one right now would be the equivalent of ranking a Missouri Valley conference basketball team number one in the nation for being undefeated in their conference. Sure they are beating some good competition, but they are not playing the best night in and night out so that is why some of the more elite teams have the right to be ranked ahead of them even though they have a few "losses" on their resume. Yes, it has been three months ago, but Shane Clanton winning four out of five against a stacked field at Volusia just two weeks after winning against the Outlaws at Screven is more impressive than Weaver's eight-for-eight run over the past two months and that is why I continue to rank Clanton in the number one position. And, while I could care less if others feel the same or not, it was good to see that two other voters still had Clanton at number one despite the fact that he dropped to number five in this week's ratings.
One other thing to keep in mind is that unlike my analogy of the undefeated Mo Valley basketball team that must play who is on the schedule that is set for them, for the most part dirt Late Model drivers have the freedom of choice of where they will compete each week and, in turn, who they will compete against. My "clear-cut number one driver" would need to be choosing a little stiffer competition. If you look back to 2014 we had another Late Model driver who put up a very impressive string of victories that went well beyond 8-for-8 and lasted throughout the entire season, yet I doubt that any pollster ever had Justin Kay in their top ten, let alone at number one.
A Weaver win at Smoky Mountain would move him up a few spots in my ballot for next week, but for now he ranks behind Clanton, Scott Bloomquist, Jimmy Owens, Darrell Lanigan, Jonathan Davenport and Josh Richards.
Speaking of the World of Outlaw Late Models, video from their show at Friendship Speedway in North Carolina was amazing in that at times you could no longer see the cars. Even announcer Ben Shelton described it as a dust storm and when you caught a glance of the people sitting in the stands you would see them with hoods up and a nice thick coating of dirt on them. You know how people say that showing videos of your racing on the internet will encourage fans to attend in the future?
Josh Richards and Casey Roberts had another dust up at Friendship likely a continuation of their issues at Screven during Speed Weeks. Now keep in mind that visibility was pretty bad, but it looked to me that Richards drove down the track on the back stretch making contact with the right rear of Roberts and sending him into a high speed spin with most of the field coming right at him. Roberts ran at Richards' car under caution and then apparently things got physical in the pit area after the race leading to a six month suspension for Roberts. The suspension is understandable as running at a moving car and throwing punches cannot be tolerated, however I have to wonder if the officials were able to see how the incident started in the first place as a review of the video would almost have to lead to some kind of penalty for Richards as well if ruled that the contact was intentional.
Okay, so enough "national" dirt Late Model stuff, how about we mention some accomplishments of drivers closer to home?
Congratulations to Blake Woodruff who won his first career IMCA Modified feature at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson Friday night. Talk about coming out of nowhere, Woodruff did not score a single top five during his first year in a Modified or the first month of this season as well before his victory. The kid has some confidence now, so look out!
Hobby Stock driver Chanse Hollatz had a spectacular weekend starting on Friday night when he made the trip down from Clear Lake to win the feature at the Iowa State Fair Speedway in Des Moines. On Saturday night Hollatz won again at the Hamilton County Speedway in Webster City then on Sunday night he completed the weekend sweep by winning on his home track in Mason City. Hollatz was definitely the Master of the Half-Miles in the Hobby Stocks.
UMP Modified driver Michael Long's weekend started rough with a DNF at Tri-City Speedway, but he bounced back strong by winning at Peoria on Saturday night and then again on Sunday night at his home track in Quincy. It was the third straight win for Long at the quarter-mile that also had some drama in the IMCA Sport Mod feature when division rookie Austen Becerra and three-time defending track champion Tony Dunker tangled. As usual "Stevie Dirt" has all of the news from Quincy Raceways covered so I will refer you to him for the details in not just one, but two stories.
Joey Gower was the winner of that Sport Mod feature at Quincy and that now moves him into the lead of the All Iowa Points standings for the Limited Modifieds by just one point over Jenae Gustin. We do still have one lady leading the All Iowa Points though as Kimberly Abbott's feature win at Quincy keeps her on top of the Sport Compact chase. Matt Ryan is the new leader in the Late Model points, the first time that I can recall him being at the top of the standings and defending Modified champion Chris Abelson has returned to the top of that division after his weekend sweep of Denison, Harlan and Raceway Park. The update has been sent over to the webmistress and she will have the new standings posted soon on the Points page at Positively Racing.
Knoxville Raceway has been cursed by the weather so far this season losing its first three events to rain. In fact the track was the only Saturday night show in Iowa to be completely rained out this past weekend and the forecast for this coming Saturday is not favorable at this time. Hopefully things will change though and the legendary speedway can finally kick off 2015 with the added special of having the National Sprint League on hand.
After my St. Louis weekend I now have seven races planned over the next nine nights and obviously I am going to need to have some weather forecasts be wrong in order to reach that number. It starts tomorrow night (Wednesday) when the Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders join the weekly program at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. From there I hope to do all three nights of the MLRA Late Model swing through the region with Donnellson on Thursday, Davenport Friday and Memphis MO on Saturday and of course there will be plenty of worthy backup plans in place both on Friday and Saturday highlighted by that NSL debut at Knoxville. Sunday racing is in the plans as well as a pair of Modified specials next Tuesday and Thursday, but more on those later.
Hope to see you somewhere out there on the Back Stretch!
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