KSP Well Worth The Visit

One of my goals each season is to get to at least one "new to me" track and since I have been going to the races for over fifty years now that gets a little harder to accomplish each year. In 2019 my only "new to me" track was the Slinger Super Speedway in Wisconsin when I tied it into a July business trip. For 2020 my goal has been accomplished in the first race night of the season as Christine, Morgan and I made it out to the Kennedale Speedway Park (KSP) just south of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex on Saturday night for the finale of the Sniper Speed IMCA Lone Star Stock Car Tour.

My previous knowledge of KSP was that it was built right next to the old Cowtown Speedway and if you check the satellite image on Google maps you can still see the remnants of the old track where it was said that if you stood on the top row of the grandstands at Cowtown you could also watch the races over at Kennedale when the two facilities raced on the same night. I can't tell you much more than that, but I will say that I can see why KSP is the one still in operation as it is a very nice facility built around a smooth and racy quarter-mile surface. And this place is not just "pretty" as they proved that they can put on a quick, efficient program something that was very welcome on a cool and breezy February evening.

As soon as one race was completed the next one was being directed to a speedway by an official who obviously loves his job and was every bit a race fan as well. Other than a little ripple in turn one that was manicured during the only intermission of the night, the track was silky smooth despite heavy rains mid-week and the drivers in all four divisions were able to run high, low and in between on both ends with no one groove becoming dominant, at least in the two main events that we stuck around for.

While the Stock Cars were the headliners for the week, the IMCA Modifieds were a solid support class at each event and while there were more than fifty of them when the week got started in Abilene, all twenty-one in attendance on this night would take the green for the thirty-lap main event. Front row starters Matt Martin and Phillip Houston would race side-by-side through the opening laps before Houston established himself as the leader with Kansas hot shoe Clay Money making it a three car chase for the lead. Our eyes were focused on two of the four western Iowa drivers in action tonight as Jesse Sobbing was riding the rim trying to move up from the fifteenth starting spot while Shane Demey tried to stay in the mix after starting sixth.

Once into lapped traffic Houston was able to put some distance on his challengers and that also allowed Glen Hibbard to make his move as Martin faded further back. At the checkers it would be the Odessa, Texas, driver Phillip Houston taking the convincing win with Hibbard a distant second. Money would hold down the third position, former IMCA Super Nationals champion Jeff Taylor would come from eleventh to fourth and Martin held on the fifth. Fort Worth's Mark Adams was sixth at the checkers ahead of Demey and Sobbing with Columbus, Nebraska's Anthony Roth ninth and Chad Melton completing the top ten. Iowa drivers Travis Hatcher and Jim Thies finished eleventh and sixteenth respectively.

This is the third year for the Lone Star Stock Car Tour and to say that it was a big success is to put it mildly. There were eighty cars in attendance when the Tour opened a week earlier in Abilene and there were fifty-three drivers signed in to compete in the finale with the field so deep that the previous night's winner in Wichita Falls, Jason Rogers was not able to make the show finishing one spot out of the final transfer in tonight's second B-Main.

The twenty-one car feature field was evenly matched, proven by the fact that ten laps into the race the leader, local driver Ryan Powers was still half a lap behind the back of the field even on the short quarter-mile. Powers had started fourth and quickly moved to the front while again our sights were focused on sixth row starters Derek Green from Granada, Minnesota, and a busy Jesse Sobbing. Both drivers were picking their way to the front, not an easy task with the field racing two and three-wide in front of them, but as the laps wound down Green had made his way into second and had his sights set on Powers.

With Powers hugging the bottom, Green went one line higher and the two raced door-to-door for a couple of laps before Green was able to get the advantage. A caution waved for early challenger Jeffrey Abbey with three laps remaining and on the restart Sobbing moved to second. Racing hard into the turns on each end Jesse tried to find a bite off the cushion, but he could not catch Green who would close out the Tour with a victory. Powers would have to settle for third just ahead of Shelby Williams who had started sixteenth and actually got to the top five before Green and Sobbing did. Pole-sitter Aaron Benedict was fifth with Iowa's Elijah Zevenbergen in sixth. Westin Abbey who picked up the big money at the "Dirty 30" event at the Texas Motor Speedway dirt track on Thursday night finished in the seventh spot with Palmyra, Nebraska's, Eric Rempel in eight. Minnesota's Dan Mackenthun was eleventh and Illinois driver Abe Huls used a borrowed car to make the field on the final lap of the first B-Main before finishing last in the feature. Kyle Falck and Wayne Landheer were the Iowans who missed the cut during qualifying action.

A full field of Southern Sport Mods ran off four heats and two B-Mains with just one caution flag and there were three heats of Factory Stocks that raced clean as well, but since my lovely wife had only come to the races so that she could spend some more time with her youngest son who now lives in Dallas we decided to head for the car before she got any colder. Like me, Morgan was very impressed with the facility and was already checking the 2020 schedule at KSP to see when he could come back here and see the Sprint Cars and Late Models.

Race night number one of 2020 is in the books with our next target being either one, or both nights of the Spring Nationals in Beatrice. After that we can roll right into a full schedule of events within a short drive from our southeast Iowa base and you can bet that I will still be looking for that next "new to me" track perhaps in Darlington, Warrensburg, Lansing, Jackson, Spencer or somewhere even further down the road. What new track will you visit in 2020?

Hope to see you there on the Back Stretch!

FREE!

Free grandstand admission at two different Midwest dirt tracks will definitely be an experiment worth watching in 2020 to see just how well it works. The first track to announce this was the Outlaw Motor Speedway south of Muskogee, Oklahoma, that is coming back to life after taking a couple of years off while the old fairgrounds track in Muskogee, the Thunderbird Speedway, picked up the slack. Take a moment and click here to go back and read how I reported the story back in December.

Not long after the much hyped announcement by Outlaw, Thunderbird announced that they will no longer be racing.

Now for the second track to give this idea a try. Veteran Modified driver Ryan Ruter will be the new promoter at the Hancock County Speedway in Britt, Iowa, for 2020 and this past week he released a schedule showing that his nine "weekly shows" will have a "Free Will Grandstand Admission". Okay, so not quite the same thing as Outlaw, but essentially you could drop a dollar in the bucket on the way in and enjoy a night of dirt track racing. Or, you could just watch it for free. Looks like that decision is completely up to you.

Ruter's five special events during the season will carry a fifteen dollar admission price.

So the question is how will this work at these tracks? No doubt that there will be a big bump in the crowd to begin with and you can bet that both promoters are using that in their sponsorship proposals in an effort to make up the lost revenue. The experiment here will be this, will the expected higher attendance hold steady or even grow as the season progresses?

Think about it this way. If you have been averaging 400 people at $10 each and you are now hoping to average 1,000 people for free that means that you are assuming that those extra 600 fans were staying home because of the ten dollar admission fee. Is that where we are at now in racing? I guess that we will find out at these two tracks this season.

Another question that I'm sure that the drivers have is "what will the purse be?" I haven't seen anything yet from Outlaw and Ruter posted today that he is waiting for sponsors to commit before he can release a purse structure and to give him a few weeks. Since pit passes are still $30 each at both tracks it will be interesting to see what the drivers will be racing for in front of these free grandstands.

Up in Wisconsin I am hearing that Steve Kasten is going a different route at SK Speedway, formerly known as Spring Lake Speedway. At the track in Unity only the drivers will be admitted free so add that one to your list of experiments to watch in 2020.

On an unrelated note (?) I went to the local high school boys basketball game last night and ended up sitting behind a gentleman who had his phone in a very nice tripod so that he could live stream the entire game on Facebook. The crowd was noticeably smaller than usual despite the fact that the Panthers were hosting a very talented team from Iowa City Regina and while the highly entertaining SOTU address may have kept some people home, I can't help but to wonder just how many five dollar tickets went unsold because some knew that they could just watch it from his feed. At one point I could see that 71 people were viewing.

Oh yes, and the Panthers won!

The Dubuque County Fair Board will take on the promotion of the races at the Dubuque Fairgrounds Speedway for 2020 with Kelly Welter serving as the Race Director. In the short video announcing this on Facebook yesterday the classes were not specified, but the track will be IMCA sanctioned with Sunday night action starting on May 5th. There will be fourteen weekly shows and two fair races, so that is good news for one of my favorite tracks in the region.

I am assuming that fans will have to pay to go to the races there though.......don't want any confusion given the title of this entry on the Back Stretch.

Just as he did last year Quincy's Michael Long was the feature winner on opening night for the UMP Modified Gator Nationals at the Volusia County Speedway in Florida. Last year Long's promising start to Speedweeks came to an abrupt end on the second night of racing when Kyle Strickler and David Stremme got stupid and collected Michael in their ongoing war, so hopefully Long can run the full schedule in 2020 and challenge for the championship.

Brandon Sheppard has become the most dominant driver in Dirt Late Model racing. After winning three out of six races in his own equipment at the Wild West Shootout in Arizona during January, "B-Shep" is back in the Rocket house car for Speedweeks and he was back in victory lane on Tuesday night with the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series at East Bay Raceway. Sheppard was coming to the front on Monday night as well when contact with Kyle Bronson sent him for a spin. Completing a 360 degree spin Sheppard never stopped, but the caution had waved and he was sent to the rear none too happy with the local hero Bronson who went on to finish second to Devin Moran.

The Lucas series made a change this year with drivers who have perfect attendance during the Georgia/Florida swing getting to use their five best finishes during Speedweeks toward the series point standings. This has definitely boosted the car count for the first two nights at East Bay with 62 for Monday's opener and 61 last night.

The feature racing has been great the first two nights and with East Bay scheduled to be sold in 2024 I definitely need to get down there one more time before that happens.

For now my first racing for 2020 will either be the Stock Car Shootout at Kennedale on February 22nd or the USMTS show at Big O Speedway on March 7th. Weather dependent of course! After that a trip to Beatrice for at least one night of the Spring Nationals is in the plans.

Where will you be going racing this year? Make sure to check out the Calendar at Positively Racing if you need a little help setting your schedule. We will continue to update it on a weekly basis as more schedules are released.

Random Pic of the Day: Hall of Famer Bobby Greiner likely leading a pack of IMCA Stock Cars at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. I believe that I snapped this photo in 1992. Bobby, does that sound right?