The stands were full and the pits were packed with more than one hundred race cars as the Jacksonville Speedway hosted the annual Herb Barlow Memorial on Friday night featuring the Midwest Open Wheel Association (MOWA) Sprint Cars and the POWRi National Midget Series. The POWRi winged Micros and the Midwest Street Stock Championship were also in action and while the show was well presented the shear size of the field along with several incidents made for a late night at the quarter-mile fairgrounds oval nestled within the city limits of Jacksonville, Illinois.
Logan Seavey from Sutter, California, is being touted as the next big star in motorsports and he is backing that up by expanding his talents to other forms of racing where he was in contention at the end of the NASCAR Truck Series race at Eldora and was the winner recently in the ARCA Stock Car race on the one mile dirt oval at the DuQuoin Fairgrounds driving for Billy Venturini. Seavey would pull double duty on the night in his familiar Keith Kunz Motorsports #67 Midget and for the first time taking the wheel of Scott Bonar's Midland Performance #50 Winged Sprint Car.
The Midgets would be the first of four features to take to the track that had developed a nasty ridge up at the top of turn one challenging drivers to either miss it, or to use it to the their advantage by precisely kicking off of it to get some extra speed through turn two. Seavey would start to the right of his KKM teammate Tanner Carrick on the front row of the thirty lap event with Carrick racing out to the lead on the opening lap. Seavey would sweep around the outside of Carrick to take the lead coming to lap two, but when the exit of turn four became a parking lot with eleven cars involved the lap was not scored giving the lead back to Carrick for the restart.
Tanner would not let that happen again following the restart and he opened up a nice advantage before lapped traffic allowed Seavey to close in once again. It was an entertaining battle as they raced through heavy traffic and Zeb Wise made it a three car chase until the left rear tire went down on Carrick's car drawing a caution for the quick tire change. He would restart as the final car on the lead lap in tenth and the race was halted three laps later when Brayton Lynch went for a wild ride down the back stretch. Lynch quickly climbed out the car uninjured and once back to racing Seavey went unchallenged for the win. Carrick was the show over the final nine laps pulling slide job after slide job in turns one and two to get all the way back up to second and if he would have had a few more laps he would have likely surprised Seavey. Wise would finish in third and Jake Neuman was headed for fourth until he flipped off the cushion in turn four coming to the checkers. That would put series point leader Tucker Klaasmeyer in fourth with the young lady from Tulsa, Holly Hollan in fifth.
With his primary challenger in the point standings Ryan Robinson taking a hard roll on the first lap of his heat race, the first driver to find that ridge, Klaasmeyer might have just wrapped up the championship on Friday night.
After Seavey snapped a few photos in victory lane he hustled over to his Sprint Car ride where he would start third behind Joe B. Miller and Jim Moughan for the twenty lap main event. Miller would win the drag race into turn one and he would stay well away from that ridge as he paced the field for the first six laps. The red flag would then wave when Jamie Ball went end over end once at the exit of turn two and after the restart Miller would again set the pace. The caution flew on lap eleven after Austin O'Dell bicycled off the ridge and then came to a stop on all fours and three laps later Cory Bruns spun in turn three. All of these cautions were likely welcomed by Miller as the traffic was thick at the back of the field, but when Seavey slipped by Moughan for second and with Paul Nienhesier jumping up to third the leader now had some company. Seavey would make a run at Miller, but could not make it stick on the bottom and when Nienheiser tried to slide him for second Miller was again able to pull away. After the white flag waved Nienheiser hit the ridge turning him hard right into the turn two wall nose first sending him for a quick rollover. The young local favorite would walk away dejected, but uninjured to a nice round of applause.
On the restart Jason Keith would slide Seavey for second in turns one and two, but as he tried to chase down Miller the driver from Farmington, Missouri, spun in turn four to produce another green-white-checkered restart and on this one it looked like the leaders were content with where they were as they navigated the final two laps without incident with Joe B. Miller scoring the flag to flag win. Seavey would add a runner-up finish in the Sprints to his Midget win, current MOWA point leader Jacob Patton would be happy with third, Jim Moughan would take fourth and Bret Tripplet returned to racing with a solid fifth place run.
It was now 11:15 and with a two and a half hour drive ahead of me I headed for the car disappointed that I would miss the final two feature races. I have become a fan of the 600cc Micros, especially on short tracks, and there was a nice field of twenty-nine of them on hand with Aaron Andruskevitch taking the win from the pole position over Joe B. Miller and Harley Hollan. I was also impressed with the Midwest Street Stock Championship cars with twenty-five of them in action and Jerrad Krick from East Park, Indiana taking the win.
The MOWA Sprints and the POWRi Midgets will be in action again tonight at the Tom Knowles Memorial at the Spoon River Speedway south of Canton, Illinois.
It was an enjoyable night of action in west central Illinois and now I prepare for another two hour plus road trip, this time to the north for the inaugural Tim Gebel Memorial at the Fayette County Speedway in West Union tonight headlined by a Hobby Stock feature paying $2,022-to-win and a solid $1,500 for second. Plus the B-Mods and the Stock Cars are paying $1,000-to-win. It has been several years since I have been to West Union and I am looking forward to the visit. Then tomorrow night I will close out a four race weekend with the Sprint Invaders at the Quincy Raceways. Hope to see you there!
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