The Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa picked a good week to sit idle as they would have been rained out anyway. The half-mile oval will be back with two big nights of action next week during the Southern Iowa Fair with the United States Modified Touring Series (USMTS) headlining on Tuesday night before Wednesday's Hawkeye Dirt Tour for IMCA Modifieds plus the conclusion of the Budweiser and Musco Lighting Stock Car Shootout.
Speaking of county fairs, they are in full swing now and there will be plenty of opportunities for race fans to get in some extra action along with some good ol' fair food over the next couple of weeks. Check the schedule at Positively Racing for all of the fair races coming up! My next event will be tomorrow night at the Cedar County Fair in Tipton with the Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders. Joining the winged sprints will be the Sport Mods racing for a $1,000 top prize as well as the American Iron Racing Series. The weather looks good and I am looking forward to returning to the quick little quarter in Tipton.
Every weather forecast that I saw for this past Sunday had no mention of rain in it, at least when I last checked on Saturday, so I was really disappointed when a line of storms pressed southeast and washed out the Deery Brothers Summer Series race at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway. I see today though that this race has now been rescheduled for Tuesday, August 16th, so that will be added to the specials calendar soon and it will definitely be on my "to do" list.
As those storms passed through Mount Pleasant they dumped seven tenths of an inch of rain in just a few minutes causing some street flooding so I then kept an eye on the radar to see if a trip to Quincy for the UMP Summer Nationals event might still be a possibility. It was as if the storms slowed and then parked just to the northwest of Quincy and despite the fact that my friend and colleague Danny Rosencrans was texting me to tell me that the rain was going to miss the track, knowing that the same radar image had soaked my hometown earlier plus an irritating case of poison ivy made me decide to sit this one out. Bad decision! From the video that I saw the next morning on Dirt On Dirt it looked like the newly reworked surface was very racey and relatively dust free as Bobby Pierce racked up another victory on the Hell Tour. It was also great to see how full the grandstands were at Quincy even with the threatening weather. I am glad that I was one of the few who chickened out!
The past couple of weeks have been really good here on the Back Stretch as the story on Oskaloosa's most recent weekly show pushed the page views to the most ever for one calendar month topping October of 2012 and the page view count also surpassed the one quarter of a million mark. Then last Thursday's story on the Lee County Fair race had several shares on Facebook making it the second most read single entry ever behind the longtime leader, this August of 2013 story on the USMTS show at Tipton. I want to thank each and every one of you for taking a moment and stopping by for a look at the Back Stretch and I hope that you will continue to do so for a long time to come!
I love the "one and done" or the "lone ranger" rule where a driver is sent to the pits if involved in just one caution during a heat race or a B-Main, but recently I saw a glaring example of one interpretation that I don't like about it. Two drivers were racing for the final transfer position in a heat race and the driver that was in fifth went into the corner too deep and spun the driver that was running fourth. With the rest of the field closing on the spun car fast, the caution waved despite the fact that the spun car was trying to get back into motion. Both cars were sent to the pits meaning that an official had determined that the "takeout" was intentional, so my question would be why not give the driver in fourth, an innocent victim, his spot back? Oh well, as I said, overall I love the rule because not only does it keep the show moving, but it trains drivers to not spin and sit waiting for a caution, even at feature time.
Congratulations to Shark Racing driver Logan Schuchart who scored his first career World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car win on Friday night at the Cedar Lake Speedway.
Johnny Fennewald is now two of three with feature wins since joining the ULMA Late Model field at the Lucas Oil Speedway in Missouri. The news for Fennewald is much worse when it comes to his Modified though as both he and Eric Turner have been disqualified from their finishes on June 30th due to tire infractions. Tire doping has been a big story recently on the national Late Model scene and it is good to see that they are checking the Modifieds as well.
Andrew Burg from Carlisle, Iowa, was the IMCA Hobby Stock feature winner at the Rolling Plains Motor (RPM) Speedway in Hays, Kansas, this weekend. Not sure why he made the long pull, but at least it paid off.
It was a big weekend for the father and son team of David and Tyler McDonald from Huron, South Dakota. On Friday night David won the WISSOTA Late Model feature and Tyler captured the WISSOTA Modified feature at the Brown County Speedway in Aberdeen, then on Saturday night they repeated their wins at their hometown Dakota State Fair Speedway. Tyler kept the streak going with the Modified win at the Miller Central Speedway on Sunday night, but dad could not close out the perfect weekend as he finished fourth in the Late Model main event that was won by Brian Diede.
Thirteen-year-old Garrett Schwartz became the youngest race winner ever at the Grundy County Speedway in Morris, Illinois, on Friday night when captured the opening heat race for the Super Late Models. You can check out the story with a picture here and take notice of the great crowd on hand for the weekly show on pavement. Feature time did not go well for the young driver though as he was credited with 20th after completing just five laps.
Mike Peters of Whitehall, Wisconsin, won the Mini-Vans feature at the LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway on Saturday night. There were four grocery getters in action, but no soccer moms behind the wheel.
We will close out today's notebook with the top 100 in the current Back Stretch National Dirt Late Model points and I hope to see you at the track soon!
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