The Rice Lake Speedway races weekly on Saturday nights, but long ago the track figured out that it was not a wise decision to race during the town's annual Aquafest, so instead they hold their races on the Tuesday night of that week. And with the mid-week show paying both track and national WISSOTA points, plus the fact that the weekly show has been rained out the past two weeks, drivers and fans were excited about coming out on an absolutely beautiful evening.
Our newest contributor at Positively Racing, Ed Reichert calls this his home track and handles the PR for the facility while his wife Linda operates the scoreboard. As you will notice from his "One Fan's Travels" Ed is often down in our neck of the woods, so for once I wanted to surprise him and show up in his neighborhood and it was great to have a prime seat next to the hard working pair.
The five WISSOTA sanctioned divisions pulled in a total of 96 cars for the evening with the Midwest Modifieds leading the way with 32 and while the track looked like it might go one-grooved around the bottom early, some well-timed trips by "the mister" truck kept the surface wide and racy all night long.
I was asking Ed and Linda questions throughout the night, primarily in regard to how the WISSOTA classes would compare with the IMCA classes if they were on the track at the same time. The Pure Stock division would be a bit slower than the Hobby Stocks and 13 cars started the first feature race of the night. The field ran in a tight pack with three cars battling for the lead on lap seven when contact sent two of the top contenders Dustin Doughty and James Clausen for a spin just as Jason Havel had taken the lead from them both. Doughty was charged with the caution so Clausen restarted in the lead only to have George Richards now emerge as the leader and he would go on to win the tight race with Havel. Ed noted that Richards makes nearly a two hour tow up from Mondovi to race his Pure Stock here since the track that is closer to him no longer runs the WISSOTA sanctioned division. Alex Smith, the nephew of the now retired Super Late Model star Brady Smith, was also in action but ended up in the turn one wall late in the race.
The Midwest Modifieds, a division that would be closely comparable to the IMCA Northern Sport Mods were up next for 15-laps and the top twenty qualifiers waged a very clean 15-lap feature that was slowed only twice for cautions. One when front row starter Austin Ellis slowed on the opening lap and the other when Dan Tautges spun on lap six. Now that I am tracking the Wisconsin Points in a few of the divisions I knew that we had some of the best in the field here tonight with the two current leaders of this division, Michael Truscott and Nick Koehler battling for the lead in this race as well. Truscott would fight off Koehler and then stretch his advantage over the closing laps to take the flag-to-flag win while Curt Myers shuffled Koehler back to third at the checkers. Shane Halopka and Joe Chaplin rounded out the talented top five.
Ed says that the WISSOTA Street Stocks would be at a bit of a horsepower disadvantage to the IMCA Stock Cars, but I can tell you that they definitely race like the Stock Cars with plenty of door-rubbing wheel-to-wheel action. Cody Kummer grabbed the lead from the pole only to have Jim Randall pull even with him on lap six. Kummer would e ahead by a bumper at the stripe until Randall nosed ahead to lead laps eight and nine. Kummer would come right back on the outside though to lead laps ten and eleven by inches before a caution waved. Mechanical woes then struck down Randall as he drove slowly to the pits and on the restart Jay Kesan gave Kummer everything that he had over the final four laps but came up just short with Kummer scoring the win. Kesan was second followed by Danny Richards, Kori Richter and Kolby Kiehl.
The WISSOTA Super Stocks are similar to the old Pro Stock division that was soild for so long in eastern Iowa and it was like a throwback for me to see a field of 23 take the green for twenty laps. Curt Myers is the defending WISSOTA National Champion in this division and has already tallied 13 feature wins in 2016, but on this night he was unable to crack the top five after starting seventh and he retired to the pits with four laps remaining, This was another see-saw battle for the lead between Shane Kisling and Bart Steffen before Nick Oreskovich broke up the party and took the lead with four laps to go, A weekly competitor at the ABC Raceway in Ashland, Oreskovich made the most of his visit to Rice Lake to score the win and then did a great job of thanking all of his sponsors as he took the mic and did a full circle of his pretty race car. Steffen who was the leader for laps two through eleven held on for second, Eric Olson was a solid third, Jeff Klopstein came from fifteenth to fourth at the checkers while Kisling took fifth by inches over Shawn McFadden.
The lightning quick WISSOTA Modifieds closed out the program with 20-laps of feature action that was dominated by pole-sitter Darrell Nelson from Hermantown, Minnesota. Track regular Ashley Anderson started fifth and tried to track down Nelson, but could never mount a challenge as he finished second ahead of Kevin Adams, Jake Hartung and Matt Leer. Adams you may remember was a winner during Speedweeks at East Bay in February and is currently tied with another Rice Lake regular Mike Anderson in my Wisconsin points.
This was the second time that I have had the pleasure of visiting this nice facility that is in its 64th season of racing and while nothing has really changed significantly since I was last here nearly twenty years ago, that is by no means a negative assessment as it is just fine as it is! The one "new" item was the big osprey nest atop the light pole headed into turn one, or was that there before as well? The beautiful birds came and went throughout the evening.
Thanks to Ed and Linda for their hospitality and for helping to add to my waistline as after some Lefse and pie at the Norkse Nook all I needed was for Linda to share the best cajun crab dip that I had ever tasted. Looks like an hour walk is in order before tonight's races.
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