On this day fifty-three years ago a race fan was born.
Well actually it was when his parents and grandparents started taking him to the races regularly when he was four years old that this race fan was "born". Give "birth" to some new race fans this season by taking your son or daughter, grandson or granddaughter to the races . And, if you already do so, have them bring a friend along sometime and introduce the sport to somebody who may not otherwise even think of going to the races. We need to get the younger generation hooked, I don't want to be in the stands and still be under the average age of the fans in attendance!
If you were looking for a lead change during in any of the Dirt Late Model regional series action that took place east of the Rockies this past weekend you were the proverbial SOL. Dennis Erb Jr. and Tony Jackson Jr. each went flag-to-flag to win feature races during the MARS sanctioned Tuckasee Toilet Bowl Classic at the Clarksville Speedway. Chris Madden was never headed on either Saturday or Sunday as he swept the Southern All Stars March Madness weekend at Cherokee Speedway and John Ownbey went the distance for the Ultimate Series opener at North Georgia Speedway. Add in a $3,000-to-win non-sanctioned blowout by Kyle Bronson at the new All Tech Raceway in north Florida and you had six Late Model shows that failed to produce even one lead change. This continues a trend that was noted in last week's notebook and hopefully it is not something that will continue as the 2016 season spreads northward.
Can't say the same about the USMTS Modifieds and their tripleheader weekend at the Southern Oklahoma Speedway. On Thursday night Ryan Gustin started fifth and became the third leader of the night on lap 19 enroute to the victory. Friday night Rodney Sanders charged up from the seventh starting spot to take the lead from Lance Town on lap two, gave up the lead to Stormy Scott for a lap with nine to go only to come back and take the $3,000 win. Then on Saturday Sanders swapped the lead with Kyle Strickler twice before winning the $4,000 finale. Our Positively Racing colleague Ed Reichert made the trip to Ardmore and you can read his thoughts at One Fan's Travels.
I like watching lead changes and that is why I have the USMTS event at I-35 Speedway in Winston, Missouri, circled on my calendar for Sunday March 20th.
With Sprint Cup rookie-of-the-year candidate Ryan Blaney having a great run in Las Vegas yesterday it made me wonder what happened to last year's top rookie, Iowa's own Brett Moffitt. Hard to believe that the young man has nothing going on at this time even at one of the lower levels of NASCAR.
March Madness basketball had most of my attention this weekend with Wes Washpun's buzzer beater to send the Northern Iowa Panthers to the NCAA tourney the biggest thrill. I also found myself intrigued by all five state championship games for the Iowa high school girls, especially the 3A tilt that featured Elle Ruffridge of Pocahontas Area. The five foot four inch dynamo averaged 28 points a game this season and led her team to this year's state championship by beating Nevada in a rematch of last year's title game. I have been known to make a road trip to watch a talented young player in person and I will have to check the Indians' schedule for next season as Ruffridge seeks to become the state's all-time leading scorer.
If you are a dirt late model fan and do not yet subscribe to Dirt On Dirt you should, especially with the addition of their new live studio show Late Model Live featuring Michael Rigsby. The show premiered on March 1st and if you can't catch it live you can always watch it from the video archives. Rigsby said that he would like the show to be something along the lines of a Dan Patrick show for Late Model fans and he definitely kept my interest in the opener. One of the things that I loved hearing from him was in regard to that ever mentioned "next level" that so many people have promised to take the sport of dirt racing to over the past couple of decades. Rigsby said that perhaps we have achieved that "next level" with dirt late model racing and that the coverage that the sport now has from sources like MavTV, LucasOilRacing.tv, CBS Sports Network, Dirt On Dirt and others is very good for a sport that, after all, is still very much a niche. The next edition of Late Model Live is on March 15th.
Back in January I updated my list of tracks that I have attended and through a forum post this week about tracks that have closed over the years I realized that I had left one off of my original list. JAX Raceway near Jacksonville, Florida, was described at the time as an "oiled dirt" surface and it definitely raced more like a pavement track than a dirt track. My old Speed Weeks crew of John & Scott Vantiger and Philip Carter attended a couple of shows there with me one year and I remember that trip more about the fact that wrestlers from the WWF were staying at our hotel than the racing. Needless to say the racing was nothing to shout about and the track has been gone now for quite some time.
Late Model fans will recall the black car #23 with the word "COAL" across the nose driven for several years by John Blankenship of Williamson, West Virginia. Blankenship's father Don was featured in a segment on last night's of episode of 60 Minutes on CBS in regard to his December 3rd conviction of conspiracy to willfully violate safety standards in the aftermath of a coal mine explosion that killed 29 miners.
After Webmistress Sue uploads this week's update the only weekly All Iowa Points track that has not yet put out their schedule will be the Frontier Sports Park in Fort Dodge, although they did indicate that they should be releasing the schedule soon. The Sioux Speedway in Sioux Rapids, a track that only runs a few times each year, is the other track in Iowa that I am still checking on. For a full rundown of events in our coverage area make sure that you visit the Calendar page at Positively Racing.
The first face off in the battle for supremacy in the world of 360 Sprint Car racing is scheduled for this coming weekend as the NSL sanctions the rescheduled Short Track Nationals at I-30 Speedway in Little Rock while the ASCS National Series is scheduled about four and a half hours away at the Creek County Speedway just west of Tulsa. Unfortunately however both are facing a dire weather forecast with projections of between eight to twelve inches of rain in Little Rock this week. The Short Track Nationals had the some scenario last October and announced changes in the schedule a day or two in advance eventually leading to this March date, so with this new competition for cars and drivers it will be interesting to see if they handle things in the same manner this week. The rainfall amounts in Oklahoma are not supposed to be as heavy, but the current forecast does call for rain on both Friday and Saturday. (Follow up: Just hours after this blog was published the Short Track Nationals were cancelled based upon the weather forecast for the rest of the week. A good call and one that shows that I-30 was thinking of their drivers and fans only. The rain threat is not as pronounced for Creek County with chances , as of now, dropping off after Saturday morning so perhaps the ASCS can at least get one night of racing in. Perhaps the best chance of seeing racing this weekend is in Beatrice, Nebraska, for the IMCA Spring Nationals)
The updated Back Stretch National Dirt Late Model points follow:
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