It is pretty common for me to be at a race track on a Wednesday night, but tonight's destination was a new one for me as a business trip to central Wisconsin landed me at the Marshfield Motor Speedway for the Dick Trickle Memorial 99. The Super Late Models were the featured class with a unique format that would see the field run three 33-lap "features" with points awarded for each and the purse for the night would then be paid out by the points accumulated over those three races. Pure Stocks and Four Cylinders were also on the card to provide some entertaining racing between the three Super Late Model events.
Pre-race publicity stated an Entry List of 27 drivers including a special appearance by Kenny Wallace so I was surprised when my Positively Racing colleague Ed Reichert told me that only twenty cars had signed in and that one of them had already loaded up and left with mechanical issues. That's okay though as the cars that were here put on quite a show in part aided by the format that saw the fastest qualifier Ben Pettis roll a "one" on the die for the invert, but since it would be added to "eight" Pettis would start the first segment from the ninth position.
Brent Strelka would lead early while Corey Jankowski challenged him on the inside. Jankowski was able to pull even with Strelka several times, but just could not complete the pass and on lap 13 the challenger gave the leader a bit of a bump that loosened up Strelka and as the two slowed a bit to gather things up the third-place car of Dalton Zehr zipped to the lead. Zehr would then drive away from there to post the first win of the night with Jankowski running second, Ryan Hinner in third, Cardell Potter moved from eighth to fourth and Pettis from ninth to fifth.
After celebrating in victory lane Zehr rolled the die with a "six" coming up putting him in the 14th starting position for the second 33-lap race. That would land Kenny Wallace on the front row and he walked away from the field to score the easy win as the rest of the field raced hard for position. Natalie Decker who started third would finish in second while Zehr raced his way up to third, Eugene Gregorich Jr. showed that a higher line could be fast as he held off everybody but Zehr to finish in fourth with Pettis again finishing fifth.
After the runaway by Wallace the third and final segment gave me one of the best races that I have seen this season as there were nine, count 'em NINE lead changes in the non-stop 33-lap race. Jankowski would lead the opening lap before pole-sitter Justin Mondiek took over on lap two. Jankowski fought back on the higher line and these two essentially ran side-by-side for the first twelve laps. Once Jankowski cleared Mondiek on lap ten Cardell Potter moved to second and immediately took up the challenge on the leader and on lap sixteen Potter nosed ahead of Jankowski to lead for three laps only to have Jankowski come right back again. With the top two swapping the lead back and forth and running side-by-side, Zehr was now in third and looking for racing room.
Jankowski moved back to the lead with six laps remaining and Zehr then made it three wide off of turn four to get under Potter with two laps to go. As the white flag waved Zehr charged to the inside of Jankowski and he was able to complete the pass heading down the back stretch to not only take the checkers first, but to dominate the overall point standings and win the $3,000 top prize. It was a Tricklesque performance by the driver who claims either Florida or Idaho as home, despite the fact that he races here in Wisconsin throughout the summer. Jankowski finished second, Potter was third, Pettis was fourth and Mondiek finished fifth in the finale.
It was not even 9:30 yet and I was headed for the parking lot so by my unofficial calculations the rest of the top four in points at the pay window would have been Potter, Jankowski and Pettis.
It is my understanding that the track struggles to draw solid car counts for its regular shows, but I can tell you that, on this night at least, it was one of the raciest pavement tracks that I have ever been to. Good show Marshfield, we miss you Dick Trickle.....
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