It was cold, and with an easterly wind blowing in at 25 to 35 mph, I mean it was REALLY cold at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa Wednesday night. Actually it was too cold for racing, but when you have the amount of support that this facility does from the community with sixty-two sponsor signs proving it (I counted) and with the race track in darn near perfect condition it was too hard to say "no" for the season opener. And despite the weather conditions, a pretty solid field of cars were on hand in front of a crowd that had more hearty souls in it than you would have expected.
A stout field of fifteen Sport Mods would be the first of four features to take to the track for sixteen laps of action and it was pole-sitter Austin Paul who raced out to the early lead. Multi-time track champion Curtis Van Der Wal quickly moved up from his third row starting spot to take second on lap two, but it did take him the next five laps to erase the lead that Paul had already built.
On lap eight Van Der Wal made a dive to the inside of Paul into turn one, but Austin held his ground and maintained the point, even rebuilding his advantage over the next five laps. With three to go the leader was going to have to deal with three lapped cars racing for position ahead of him, but when one of those, Jarrett Vandenberg slid up the track and tagged the guardrail, the caution waved for the only time in this race.
With the restart Van Der Wal was given new life to challenge the leader, but instead he had to fight off Logan Anderson just to hold on to second and that allowed Austin Paul to pull away for the impressive opening night win. Van Der Wal and Anderson were not far behind, Brayton Carter came from ninth to fourth and Colton Livezy filled out the top five. Carter Vandenberg had a top-five finish in sight until a flat tire sent him to the pits with five laps remaining.
The Stock Cars were up next for sixteen laps and with Cayden Carter drawing the pole position this one was pretty much decided at the drop of the green. Derrick Agee came from fourth to put a challenge on Carter in the opening laps, but Cayden would then drive away for a dominating win. Agee was the runner-up, Michael Petersen was behind him in third, Dustin Griffiths moved from eighth to fourth and the veteran Howard Gordon Jr. finished in fifth. Defending track champion Nathan Wood was racing in fourth when a fire under the hood sent him to the pits on lap six and it was good to see some new faces in the division with Jason McDaniel over from the Sport Mods, Kyle Boyd up from the Sport Compacts as well as Tyler Moore from Lockridge. All three Stock Car rookies looked good and will soon be challenging the division veterans for the checkers.
Defending Sport Compact track champion Brandon Housley did not go anywhere in his heat race, but after drawing the pole position for the ten lap finale he proved that he is still the man to beat in the four cylinders as he cruised to the flag-to-flag win. Trent Orwig chased him the entire distance to finish second and Mitchell Bunch appeared to have third locked up until a late restart saw him fail to come back up to speed. This allowed Billy Cain to claim that third place money with James Haring and Louie Winkelman completing the top five.
The Hobby Stocks would close out the night with this being the only class that had fewer cars than I had expected at nine. The pressure was on Nick Ulin to make it four straight winners from the pole, but when he drove it too hard into turn three on the opening lap he hit the guardrail and then limped to the pits as Derek Kirkland took the lead. I don't think anybody would have been able to beat Dustin Griffiths though as he stormed from the third row to take the lead away from Kirkland on lap three and then pulled away for the convincing win. Kirkland held on to second ahead of Clint Nelson, Christian Huffman and Craig Brown.
The racing action was wrapped up at 8:54 p.m. and that wasn't just because it was cold outside, as a mid-week race track the promoters know that they need to get you in and out of there in an efficient manner so you can expect that same type of performance every Wednesday night. A big thank you to announcer Jerry Mackey for the mention of Positively Racing, especially since my colleagues Dick and Joyce Eisele and Ed Reichert were also in attendance. Click on the links to get their frigid point of view and I can guarantee you that the weather for next Wednesday's racing at Osky will be better!
Next up for me, weather permitting, will be the Sprint Invaders opener at the Quincy Raceways on Sunday night. Hope to see you there!
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