After winning twice and finishing second the other two times over a four race weekend in his Crate Late Model, Tampa area driver Kyle Bronson continued his hot streak with a win in his Modified during the final night of action for the Sunshine State Modified Tour at East Bay Raceway Monday night. It sounds like some tempers flared along the way as Bronson was the trigger of a multi-car pileup early in the race and I found it interesting that the race story had the headline Bronson Bullies His Way To East Bay Win.
Kewanee's Ray Bollinger had his best showing of the weekend running second with locals Steve Miller and Devin Dixon next in line while Iowa's own Mike Van Genderen completed the top five. Despite leading the points after the first four races, Van Genderen will stick with his plans to head back home and miss the final five events that are to be run at Bubba Raceway in Ocala and the North Florida Speedway near Lake City. Mike definitely left his mark competing in Florida for the first time and I wonder if series officials are hearing it from the other drivers in regard to the allowances that were given for his IMCA crate engine.
No Speed Weeks action tonight, but that will be the last break barring any weather issues until the Daytona 500 on February 21st.
It was pretty obvious way back around Thanksgiving when the Air Capital Shootout at 81 Speedway was announced that it would be an NCRA and NSL 360 event when it is run on March 25th and 26th that the NCRA was going to pair up with the National Sprint League. Today it became official when the two announced their partnership in an 18-race schedule that starts and ends at the historic oval in suburban Wichita. As I entered the dates for the next update to our master schedule though I came across a couple of interesting items that may yet to be resolved. First off there are a few dates at Junction Motor Speedway and at I-80 Speedway where the Carpetland Nebraska 360 Sprints were already on the schedule. My guess would be that these will be run as co-sanctioned events, but the same cannot be said for the July 22nd date at the Outlaw Motor Speedway in Wainwright, Oklahoma. Both the track's website and the ASCS site, as of this morning, shows this as an ASCS Red River Region event and given the relationship between the ASCS and the NSL I would think that it will have to be one or the other. Guess we will have to see how it shakes out.
As one of the co-announcers for the Shottenkirk Sprint Invaders the past three seasons I have a vested interest in their schedule and other than what I have seen on some individual tracks' websites, a full schedule of events has not yet been released. This might suggest that a similar partnership with the NSL may be in the works although the April 2nd NSL 360 date at the Randolph County Speedway in Moberly, Missouri, would go straight up against the Invaders traditional opener at 34 Raceway near Burlington. Oh well, that will be one date that I will have to miss anyway as we are traveling to a wedding that weekend.
I have also noticed that the Upper Midwest Sprint Car Series (UMSS) is also a bit later than normal in regard to releasing a schedule so perhaps they too are working on a partnership with the NSL.
I will say this, as a Sprint Car fan you will have many more races to choose from in the region this year, but I have to wonder if there will be enough cars to go around. Hope so!
For those of you who either enjoy or despise the weekly Dirt On Dirt Top 25 poll you no longer have myself, Barry Johnson or Ron Meyer to thank, or to make fun of any more depending upon how you look at it. The three of us were among the other twenty media members who are no longer being asked to participate in the weekly ballot as they have brought it all "in house" now with a team of ten. I enjoyed participating in the poll and I really appreciated the opportunity that was given to me by Todd Turner, Andy Savery, Alli Collis and the rest of the DoD staff. The poll is obviously just a collection, or "average" of opinions and even though it really doesn't mean anything it definitely creates conversation. Mostly by forum board posters who will first question the knowledge of the voters and will then illustrate just how much opinions can vary as they themselves argue it out over four or five pages of discussion.
Finally for today, I am so excited that my house phone will go back to being dormant as the political circus has now moved to New Hampshire, South Carolina and beyond. I was surprised that not one person stood up to advocate for Donald Trump in our precinct and I told my wife on the way home that this told me that he would not be the winner. Iowans can now go back to living life outside of the spotlight!
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