First of all I want to thank each and every one of you who stopped in for a read on the Back Stretch during the month of October as it was the third highest month of readership that I have had since we moved online in 2009 and all three of those "highest months" have come here in 2017. I really do appreciate the support and I hope that you continue to come back here because you are either informed, entertained or both by what you are finding on the Back Stretch.
Wow! Racers were showing their anger and frustration with on track altercations this past weekend all the way from NASCAR to Shiverfest. I read a story in the Burlington Hawk Eye this week that what happened at Martinsville is exactly what NASCAR wanted from their playoff format, where drivers would have to "do anything" to get a win instead of playing it safe for points. That has become quite obvious, but should NASCAR really be saying that they are okay with drivers essentially knocking each other out of the way until the last man standing takes the win? You can get away with it at Martinsville, but it was that same mentality that produced the demo derby at Talladega a few weeks ago where only fourteen of the forty starters were still running at the checkers. At a time when NASCAR needs to reduce its costs so that ticket prices can come down and make it affordable for families to attend in person again, the last thing that they need is to be encouraging drivers to destroy their equipment each week for the playoff format.
Of course the Chase Elliott and Denny Hamlin dust up made the big news, but I liked the fact that a couple of my friends on Facebook pulled up video from a road course Truck series race not long ago when Elliott spun Ty Dillon on the final lap to steal a win. And let's just say that he didn't seem to be too remorseful in victory lane. Guess that proves the ol' saying "what comes around, goes around."
Jack Sullivan welcomed Cade Dillard to the world of Late Model racing by driving into him and rolling Dillard's stopped car over on to its roof at Whynot Speedway in Mississippi. A good ol' southern on track brawl then ensued before calmer heads could prevail. Dillard, who has been one of the best on the United States Modified Touring Series (USMTS) the past couple of years has been impressive in his first few Late Model starts since purchasing the car from Jason Krohn in late September. Sullivan would not agree.
Down at the Dirt Track at Charlotte Modified drivers Kyle Strickler and David Stremme went at it after Strickler threw a big slider on Stremme in turns one and two and then Stremme appeared to make sure that Strickler ran out of room against the wall going down the back stretch. The two drivers who used to essentially be business partners then had it out on track. To stoke the flames even more, OneDirt.com then posted one of those You Make The Call videos so that all of us experts could chime in. I guess that's one way to score hits, I need to try that sometime.
Tempers even flared on the local level Saturday when Jerry Hinton and Brandon Jewell decided to run their Sport Mods into each other during a caution period at Shiverfest. I realize that tempers flare and it might feel like the right thing to do at the time, but man, I have a hard time hearing drivers talk about the cost of racing when I see so many of them willing to damage their own car just because they are mad about an on track incident. At least it didn't escalate to this level.
When NASCAR first went to the "Chase" format we saw a couple of short track series do the same and I have even heard of some weekly tracks that tried to adopt a similar format. Not a fan here and that is why I was pleased to see the announcement this week that the USMTS will ditch "The Hunt" format for 2018 and go back to the traditional "every race counts" toward the championship. Now granted, with their extensive schedule that often had over eighty races scheduled, The Hunt kind of made sense for the series, but along with the announcement it was stated that the 2018 USMTS schedule will see a significant reduction of events totaling around forty. The series champion will collect a whopping $50,000 in 2018 and any driver who competes in each and every event will receive at least $5,000 for their efforts. Now that is some serious jingle!
For those of you who might be worried that Todd and Janet Staley will have to find something else to do on those other forty to fifty nights, it was also noted that the USMTS Southern Series will be "reanimated" with its own point fund and a schedule that will have most, if not all of its events completed before Memorial Day.
The Southern Iowa Fair Board in Oskaloosa announced that it is accepting bids for the 2018 season from anybody who would be interested in leasing the facility for racing. The Fair Board has been operating the track for the past few years with Mike Van Genderen as the Race Director, but now they are looking for someone else who is willing to take the financial risk. I found it amusing that within ten minutes of posting the announcement on Facebook someone commented "will there still be races?" Here's your sign.....
I already offered up my ideas on how to breathe some life back into the place back in August and I would be more than happy to share them in more details with anybody who is sincerely interested and willing to take the risk. Be warned though that I lost nearly twenty grand back in 1992 trying some "new ideas" at the Lee County All Star Speedway so I will admit that I might not be right. And that pretty much shot my race promoting budget, so I am just a paid contributor/consultant now.
Perhaps another concept that I put forward six years ago might work as well. Hard working Jeff Kropf has stepped away from his duties with the fair boards at both Eldon and Bloomfield to put on races and while my original thoughts had Memphis, Missouri, as the third track, maybe we can make some adjustments to the idea to include Osky also or instead. In my opinion Saturday nights would not be good there with competition from Knoxville, Eddyville and the figure eight racing in the area, so when it came to the Southern Iowa Speedway's turn in the rotation I would still root for Wednesday nights. But hey, I'm biased.
What are the chances that you could get three different Fair Boards to work together? Will the Browns make it to the Super Bowl this year?
Now to go back to a couple of items from last week's Notebook.....First of all I had someone contact me asking what I meant by putting "sticking his neck out" in quotes when giving my thoughts on the Dirt Million. So I asked him, "what do you suppose that one hundred thousand to win, two thousand to start purse adds up to?" About a quarter of a million dollars was his reply. Then I asked, "what do you suppose a ticket will cost to the Saturday night program?" Fifty bucks was his response and I said "and how many seats does the Mansfield Speedway have?" "I saw that they had twenty thousand at a Truck race there once," he replied. Then I asked, "what does twenty thousand times fifty equal?"
He was good at math so let's just say that the conversation ended there.
I was also giving you a bit of a math test when I asked last week which of the two purses below would draw the most cars, Purse A or Purse B?
| Purse A | Purse B | |||||
| 1 | . | $1,000 | 1 | . | $1,000 | |
| 2 | . | $600 | 2 | . | $550 | |
| 3 | . | $450 | 3 | . | $400 | |
| 4 | . | $375 | 4 | . | $325 | |
| 5 | . | $300 | 5 | . | $250 | |
| 6 | . | $250 | 6 | . | $200 | |
| 7 | . | $225 | 7 | . | $175 | |
| 8 | . | $200 | 8 | . | $150 | |
| 9 | . | $180 | 9 | . | $130 | |
| 10 | . | $160 | 10 | . | $110 | |
| 11 | . | $150 | 11 | . | $100 | |
| 12 | . | $140 | 12 | . | $90 | |
| 13 | . | $130 | 13 | . | $80 | |
| 14 | . | $120 | 14 | . | $70 | |
| 15 | . | $110 | 15 | . | $60 | |
| 16 | . | $100 | 16 | . | $50 | |
| 17 | . | $100 | 17 | . | $50 | |
| 18 | . | $100 | 18 | . | $50 | |
| 19 | . | $100 | 19 | . | $50 | |
| 20 | . | $100 | 20 | . | $50 | |
| 21 | . | $100 | 21 | . | $50 | |
| 22 | . | $100 | 22 | . | $50 | |
| 23 | . | $100 | 23 | . | $50 | |
| 24 | . | $100 | 24 | . | $50 | |
| Tow | : | $50 | Tow | : | $0 | |
| Pit Pass | : | $30 | Pit Pass | : | $30 | |
| Entry Fee | : | $50 | Entry Fee | : | $0 | |
| Ticket | : | $15 | Ticket | : | $15 |
As I have been watching the purses being posted for several of the special events being held around the area this Fall I wondered why promoters would have a $50 Entry Fee when all they were paying for Tow Money was $50. It seemed like an unnecessary exchange of money to me when the Net was zero anyway so I wanted to see if this little shell game actually made a difference or not. And the answer is, yes it does! Of those who responded by picking a purse 80% said Purse A even though the Net amount of money going to the drivers in Purse B, where there is no Entry Fee, is exactly the same. Except of course for the winner's paycheck that I left the same so actually Purse B costs the promoter $50 more than Purse A.
No real point to be made here, I was just doing some research as to how best to handle things when I finally do run my Open Trailer Nationals. I am still leaning toward having no entry fee as I would rather pay less at the top and not have drivers paying more for a pit pass and entry fee combined than what they get at the pay window at the end of the night. Perhaps it is a concept that an open trailer racer will embrace.
We are not even done with the 2017 racing season yet and schedules for 2018 are already being released! My Positively Racing colleague Danny Rosencrans has the news from Quincy where new owners Jason & Robert Goble have hopefully eased some of the concerns of the Late Model fans in the area by including the Crates on essentially an every other week basis and the indication that they are working with UMP to book a Summer Nationals Tour race. I do know one thing, the Gobles need to figure out a way to start communicating their race results to the public either on a website or through their Facebook page because the only way that you would have found them from the last two events there in 2017 would have been through Danny's blog.
Now I look forward to hearing more about what Brad Stevens and Jessi Mynatt have planned for 34 Raceway in 2018. Those that know the couple know that they love Late Models so I am interested to see if, and how the division might be included in next year's schedule and what rules package or packages they might go with. There is also the big question as to who, if anybody, will sanction the annual Slocum 50 after how the MARS team pulled out prior to the race in April.
As Danny summed up his story, it is going to be an intriguing offseason!
But hey, I still have two more events on my "to do" list with one of them coming up this Saturday at the CJ Speedway in Columbus Junction. Much to the chagrin of a couple of forum board posters the track has named the event the "1st Annual Turkey Dash" that will feature Modifieds, Stock Cars, Sport Mods and Sport Compacts. The gates will open at 2 p.m. with hot laps at 4:00 and racing to follow. Apparently track announcer Michael Sunken is unable to be there so promoter Larry Richardson has reached out to me to fill in, but my challenge is that I need to be at a fundraising event back here in Mount Pleasant by 7:30 that evening. As a fan in the stands I was planning on slipping out unnoticed if needed at seven o'clock, but as the announcer it will be much more obvious. Then again, there might be a good number of fans who would be happy to have nothing but silence on the P.A. by then!
Here's hoping the weather cooperates as it will be interesting to see who pulls through the gates for one last chance to race in the state of Iowa this season. One driver that I know will be there is Sport Compact driver Barry Taft who is trying to close out the season in a big fashion. With his runner-up finish at Shiverfest on Saturday and his win at Quincy on Sunday Taft is now dead even with 2009 and 2010 champion Nate Coopman in the All Iowa Points standings and a strong showing by Taft at CJ will break the tie. The Four Cylinders are the only division where the points scale is determined by car count so if only three to five cars are in attendance Taft will need to win to earn a point. If there are six to nine cars signed in he will need to finish in the top three and if there are ten or more on hand it will take a top-five finish to break the tie. Otherwise the two will be named Co-Champions something that has happened twice in the past when Eric Lutz and Jack Dover tied for the 360 Sprints title in 2010 and when Devin Smith and Shannon Anderson ended up tied in the Hobby Stock standings in 2013. So there you go, a little race within a race for you to watch if you decide to make your way to the races at CJ this Saturday.
Hope to see ya there!
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