I mentioned last week that I was "in that post Knoxville letdown" and part of that is because each year I realize that there are fewer of us dinosaurs there as Media to cover the event using the written word. Just like everything else in our society now, race coverage is being consumed in sound bites and video clips that are distributed almost instantaneously so by the time that I drive home, or to Steph and Barry's house my "home away from home" during the Knoxville Nationals, and take the time to type out a description of the event it is essentially "old news" by then since the highlight reel is already up on a Facebook page.
Don't get me wrong, I think that it is great that the event has that kind of immediate exposure and those that provide it do en excellent job. In fact I believe that you can attribute Saturday's sellout crowd to being a result of their efforts, but I am like the old veteran player who now sits at the end of the bench and wonders just how much longer he is going to be wanted.....or needed. I do still get a few hundred page views for my nightly recaps from Knoxville though so as long as there are those of you who still take the time to read the written word, this old dinosaur will continue on even though those numbers pale against the two or three thousands views I have with a story on a race night in Vinton or Oskaloosa!
Besides, if Kyle Ealy can return to the dark side and start blogging again, I have to hang right in there with him! So let's break out of this funk now and start sharing some random notes and observations once again.
For the past several years the Sprint Invaders have scheduled a doubleheader or tripleheader for the weekend following the Knoxville Nationals and those events have enjoyed some nice success. This past weekend the Invaders drew 27 360 c.i. winged Sprint cars to the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson Friday night and 24 cars to Burlington's 34 Raceway on Saturday. This was impressive considering that two other tracks in the region decided to schedule post-Knoxville events on Saturday with Park Jefferson near Sioux City running a $5,000-to-win show for the 410's and the Hamilton County Speedway in Webster City booking a Lucas Oil ASCS National Series event. The Park Jeff show pulled in just eleven cars, with three of them being from the McCarl family, and in Webster City there were thirteen ASCS touring drivers and not one single car that does not follow the tour. This does not mean that the racing wasn't good at either event, but the car counts for each were surprisingly low and I think that shows that after two weeks of non-stop racing at Knoxville and the Osky Challenges, regional drivers and crews need to take a week off.
So why does it work for the Sprint Invaders? Check their roster from this past weekend and you will see only a handful of drivers who participated in this year's action at Knoxville, and all for just the 360 Nationals, so even they had already had their one week off while the rest are itching to get back to the track after likely being in the stands to watch at Knxoville.
Congratulations to Randy Martin who took the win at Donnellson on Friday coming back to pass leader Paul Nienheiser late in the race. Nienheiser in the Midland Performance #50 for the weekend had driven by Martin earlier, but the ol' veteran from California, Missouri, dug deep and charged right back to take the win. Then on Saturday night it was great to see Burlington's own Cody Wehrle celebrate his first feature win with the Sprint Invaders and lock himself into a solid point lead with three events still on the schedule. You won't find a nicer young man and it has been a joy watching him get faster and faster each season in the Andy Huston Racing #40c. That top four at 34 Raceway showed the youth movement with McKenna Haase in second, Dustin Clark third and Tanner Gebhardt recovering from motor issues on Friday night to come from tenth to fourth. And a big thank you to Randy Martin who stuck around for a rare appearance at 34 Raceway to finish fifth.
As mentioned three races remain on the Sprint Invader schedule with the next event on Sunday September 16th at Jason Goble's Quincy Raceways. Then the Invaders will close out the season with a big two day show at 34 Raceway, The Fall Haul on Friday and Saturday September 28th and 29th. Mark it on your calendars!
On Saturday morning I watched some of the live stream of Caleb Hammond's racing experience from the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa and everyone involved did a spectacular job of making a dream come true for the 11-year-old who is dying from leukemia. The young man got a little squirrely on his first two attempts entering turn one coming up to speed, but after that he handled it like a pro! The whole situation should bring a tear to your eye, but for some reason it really hit me as I watched Dustin Griffiths and Mike Hughes flank Caleb's car and take turns racing up beside him. First, Dustin on the inside and then Mike on the outside to give him a real feel of what it is like to race on a Wednesday night at his hometown track. Other drivers did the same as well as you will see in this video. The racing community and the community of Oskaloosa came together to make it a very special experience for Caleb.
In that video clip you catch a brief glimpse of Scott Watson who served as the public address announcer for the day's racing action. Scott has been battling some serious health issues of his own, but listening to him on Saturday it is easy to hear that neither his voice or his quick wit have been effected. Good job Scott!
From that to this......
On Friday afternoon after battling on and off rain showers all day with still more on the radar the Davenport Speedway made the announcement that they would have to cancel the night's races on the track's Facebook page. So let me ask you this, if this was the track that you regularly attended and you saw that during an iffy day weather wise they had just canceled, raise your hand if your immediate action would be to comment on that post with the term "Wtf?". Okay, so those of you with your hands up right now, you are idiots, unless of course you use that acronym for the term "Where's The Fun?" since you now need to find something else to do that night since the races are canceled.
Seriously people? I am absolutely amazed at some of the stuff that gets posted as comments on the Facebook pages of different tracks wondering just what motivates someone to say things that are just so stupid! Then again, it is better than when we just had Anonymous Weasel Posters (AWP's) hiding behind usernames on a forum as now we can actually click on the profile of the person making the comment and say "yep, I can see that." Kind of like Bill Engvall's comedy bit "Here's Your Sign".
Working on the Minnesota points this week I noticed that the top two Stock Car drivers in the All Iowa Points made the trip up to the Arlington Raceway just southwest of the Twin Cities on Wednesday August 1st for the track's annual Stock Car Shootout. South Central Minnesota hot shoes Jeffrey Larson and Luke Sathoff finished one-two with Damon Murty in third. John Oliver Jr. made the six plus hour tow from Danville, Iowa, started sixteenth and finished eighth in the twenty-nine car field.
Add Modified driver Luke Lick of Rosholt, South Dakota, to my list of great racing names.
Have I mentioned how proud I am of my son Morgan who is now handling the press releases for Terry McCarl, Austin McCarl, Carson McCarl and Josh Schneiderman? With a full time job plus classes working toward his MBA he does not have time to add more clients at this time, but those classes will end in December so if you are looking for help in 2019.....The kid has been coming up with concepts for special event promotions for several years now and I will not be surprised if he pulls one off here in the next couple of years.
Congratulations to Abe Huls who won his 100th IMCA sanctioned Stock Car feature event on Friday night at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson. I had the pleasure of being the guy sticking the microphone in his face in victory lane and afterward Abe asked if I could help him figure out what his overall win total was. So I went home that night, pulled up my All Iowa Points spreadsheets from 2006 on since Abe had raced in the division and counted up a total of 123 wins on AIP tracks. Add one more victory to that at the I-35 Speedway in Winston, Missouri, earlier this year and the total count is 124 for a driver that has long been one of my favorites both on and off the track.
The one night of racing at the West Liberty Raceway in 2018 was a big success as more than 140 cars were in action in front of a full grandstand on Saturday August 11th. I would have been there myself had it not been the final night of the Knoxville Nationals, but Brian Neal did a fine job of providing some Positively Racing coverage of the event in Midwest Racing News. It will be interesting to see what this night leads to now in regard to plans for the historic track in 2019 as one big special does not necessarily mean that weekly racing should return. I wanted to see a full roster of the drivers in attendance so that I could see where they came from. 34 Raceway in Burlington had the night off from regular racing since they were hosting a Figure 8 event, however both Maquoketa and Independence were both in action and seemed to have their normal car counts. So where did these 140+ cars come from and could you count on 80 or 90 of them being at West Liberty on Saturday nights next year?
At this point my selfish wish is that they hold more than one night of action at West Liberty in 2019 so that I can return to the track that I essentially grew up at!
One track that has benefited from West Liberty sitting idle this season is the CJ Speedway in Columbus Junction as some drivers who previously raced one night a week on Saturdays are now making CJ their Friday night choice in 2018. CJ's success story actually started in 2017 though after they dropped their two novelty classes, the Mod Lites and the Trucks, since both were drawing eight or fewer competitors each week and then took most if not all of that purse money and spread it through their four regular classes of Modifieds, Stock Cars, Sport Mods and Sport Compacts. Car counts in each of those four grew in 2017 and that growth has continued in 2018.
Why do I point this out today? Because I see that the Quad City Speedway has announced that they will drop the Mod Lite division for 2019 and right away people start suggesting what class, or classes, should replace them. Don't "replace" them with anything! Take the $1,000 or so that you were paying the seven or eight car field of Mod Lites and spread that money into the back of one or more of your existing classes and see if you experience the same results as Columbus Junction did where the growth in your regular classes more than covers the "loss" of the class you dropped.
Any weekly track that has five or more divisions right now with one or more of them averaging less than ten cars a night should look at doing the same thing. And, shocker, it might not be the class with the lowest average that should be dropped. Each promoter should take a hard look to determine what mix of divisions will give him or her the best chance to sell tickets to general race fans, those who are not directly connected to a driver because that is what will determine the future success of the track. Friends and family will nearly always be there and even though they may bitch about a show running late, or the track being dusty, they will be there once again the following week if their driver is there. When the back gate mentality took over we somehow forgot about what an unaffiliated race fan wants to see and that is a reason why many weekly tracks are struggling.
There are tracks out there that still put on a good show even if they are only getting eight to twelve cars per division. I have to been to several shows like that in 2018. The one thing that I do not like about those shows though is that the heat races are nothing but a second set of hot laps. Two heats of six cars where the top five either make the invert or the re-draw offers no incentive for drivers to actually race once they are in the top five. I am waiting for the first track to go back to paying purse money in the heat races, perhaps $50 for first, $30 for second and $10 for third to give the race fans some actual racing once again in the heats.
No racing for me over the next two weekends due to other commitments and family time so I will miss out on Season Championship events and the Labor Day weekend specials. Plans are to expose Morgan to his first visit to the IMCA Super Nationals for one night and then after that I will be searching through our Specials Calendar to find my next destination. Hope that you have your favorites marked as well and we might just see you on the Back Stretch!
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