Quincy to Terre Haute to Donnellson

I had one of those classic weeks that a salesman can usually only dream about when the schedules for two current clients and four different prospects all fell into place perfectly. The result was a good old fashioned road trip that covered 1,558 miles through five different states for meetings in four major Midwest cities over a four day period. So what does this have to do with racing? I was able to bookend the trip with events on Sunday and Thursday night while catching the features only at a track that was right along my route on Wednesday evening. Nothing like mixing some racing in with a successful business trip!

While I should probably go in the order that they are listed in the title, I am going to start with the final stop on the trip last night at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson. With a holiday weekend coming up and with one of Terry Hoenig's nights of destruction on the schedule here for Saturday night, Dave Sapp and Mike VanGenderen moved the track's regular Friday night program up a night to Thursday and ran a draw/re-draw format which drew in a few extra cars for the evening.

Two items of significance from Thursday's show at the Lee County Speedway. First and foremost, all five divisions ran their feature events from start-to-finish, green-to-checkers, without a single caution flag needed. Amazing! Have you ever seen a five division program run their features off without a caution? I am pretty sure that I haven't and I would guess that it might be a long time before I would ever see it happen again. How does this happen? Well first of all the track preparation was fantastic from the beginning. Other than squirting a little water in some strategic locations from a small tank on a four wheeler and taking a lap or two to pack down the cushion before some of the races, no "re-working" of the surface was required. The racing surface was wide and multi-grooved, a true credit to the entire track prep crew at the speedway. It goes beyond the track prep though, it obviously takes cooperation from the drivers as well in the form of sportsmanship and professionalism.

There was a lot of door-to-door and wheel-to-wheel racing going on including some bumping and grinding, but drivers kept their heads, did some give and take, and more importantly nobody blatantly retaliated because they felt that somebody had raced them too hard on the previous lap. True sportsmanship was displayed by at least three drivers who spun to the infield during their race, but instead of inching back out onto the track to draw a caution like we see so many times, instead they accepted their misfortune and either rejoined the race now a little further behind, or they pulled further into the infield to make sure that they did not stop the action.

There was also professionalism shown by a couple of drivers who perhaps are still pretty new to the sport, or have moved into a higher division and are still trying to get the feel for their cars. at least twice I saw a driver at the back of the pack nearly spin only to gather it back up and then perhaps slow down a bit to where they were more comfortable with their car. In other words, nobody was driving over their head and the net result of all of the above was a great night of racing where everybody put their cars back on the trailer in one piece!

The second item of signifigance was that there was not one single official lead change in any of those five features. Now before you jump to the conclusion that this meant a one-grooved, follow the leader train race rememnber what I mentioned about the trap prep above and take note that I had to use the word "official" in the first sentence of this paragraph.

The first feature of the night was the Sport Compacts with John Whalen racing out to a big lead as the field battled two and three-wide behind him for position. Current All Iowa Points leader Austen Becerra cleared the pack to take over second with just a few laps remaining and tried to run down the leader, but he came up just a few car-lengths short as Whalen repeated his win from the night before in Oskaloosa. Brandon Reu, Josh Barnes and Barry Taft were next in line.

The Sport Mods were up next for twenty-laps with 2013 All Iowa Points champion Carter VanDenBerg jumping to a big lead while the action was furious behind him. The current All Iowa Points leader Tony Dunker gradually worked his way up to second and reeled in VanDenBerg as the laps wound down. Dunker was able to stick a nose under the leader on two occasions in the closing laps, but he could not complete the pass as VanDenBerg scored the victory. John Oliver Jr. would finish third ahead of Brandon Dale and the tenth-starting Jim Gillenwater.

Only five of the six Hobby Stocks would start their A-Main and it was a two car tussle for the win between Dane Blozovich and current All Iowa Points leader Dustin Griffiths throughout the 15-lap distance. Blozovich held the lead at the stripe each time, but on two occasions Griffiths actually pulled ahead while working the lower line around the turns. Blozovich would win it by less than a car length over Griffths, Andrew Hustead, Anthony Cassat and Ron Downing.

As they usually do, the Stock Cars provided non-stop action throughout their twenty-lap main event with Tom Bowling Jr. leading the pack. Louis Lynch applied the pressure throughout the race pulling even with Bowling on lap twelve and when John Oliver Jr. closed in on the lead duo it was a three-car race for the lead over the final four laps. Lynch nosed ahead of Bowling on the low side of turn three with two laps to go and when Lynch tried that same move on the final lap, not only was he unable to complete the pass but it also allowed Oliver to drive by him on the outside to take second at the line glued to the back bumper of the winner Tom Bowling Jr. Jim Lynch made a late pass of Jason Cook to finish in the fourth spot.

The Modifieds were up next to close out the evening with Jeff Mueller racing out to a solid advantage. Mueller’s lead grew as a talented group of drivers including defending All Iowa Points champion Jesse Sobbing battled it out for the second position and when Brandon Banks engaged Sobbing over the final laps, Mueller cruised to the win his first of the 2014 season. It was a happy crew in victory lane although they would need to check on why the motor in the #77 shut down just past the finish line. Banks prevailed in the race for second, Sobbing in what I believe was his first trip ever to Donnellson finished third and Cayden Carter edged out Jeff Waterman by a bumper to take fourth.

This mid-week show started right on time at 7:30 and the sixty-six cars in five classes saw the final checkers wave at 9:26 p.m. Kudos to Mike VanGenderen, his entire crew and all of the drivers for putting on a fantastic night of racing. Needless to say, if you have not been out to the Lee County Speedway for awhile, you need to check it out.

Going back to the start of my week, after attending my niece Maeve’s graduation in Williamsburg Sunday afternoon I decided that I had to make the now two and a half hour drive down to the Quincy Raceways as the track was celebrating its 40^th Anniversary with the running of the Scottie’s 40 for UMP Late Models. New promoter Ken Dobson had floated a list of some of the out of town drivers who he thought might be in attendance on Facebook and that was enough to catch my attention thinking that the count might push the twenty mark. It went well beyond that though as a solid field of 26 Late Models had just completed qualifying when I arrived a few minutes after six o’clock. I was a bit surprised to see young phenom Bobby Pierce there for the $2,000-to-win event and I was even more surprised when San Antonio, Texas, racer Allen Murray hit the track for his heat race.

The top five from each of three heats transferred directly to the A-Main and after he slipped off the top of the speedway early in his heat Brandon Sheppard was forced to win the B-Main that determined the final five qualifiers. The invert number put Pierce on the front row along with Mark Burgtorf whom not that long ago was Quincy Raceways’ own “young phenom” and he is still pretty darn stout now that he isn’t a teenager, and the forty-lap race went non-stop. Pierce was the class of the field driving quickly away from his competition and lapping the field all the way up to the third spot who just happened to be Brandon Sheppard. Besides the dominating performance of Pierce, “B-Shepp” was the show as he raced both high and low to work his way up from sixteenth to third as he could not find a way around Burgtorf before the checkers waved. Local drivers Denny Woodworth and Justin Reed completed the top five while the Texan Murray finished in seventh.

Prior to the Late Model feature Jim Lynch made a late pass of race leader Nathan Hayes, and then fought off a comeback attempt by Hayes on the final lap to win the IMCA Stock Car feature. And Joey Gower is enjoying his return to racing by taking the checkers in an IMCA Sport Mode main that had to be checkered due to reaching the time limit after several incidents. Tony Dunker finished in the second position to continue and absolutely astounding streak where he has finished either first or second in the Sport Mod feature for thirty-five straight races at Quincy.

With my road trip set to begin early the next morning I headed for the gates as Pierce took the checkers so was not around for the UMP Modified or the IMCA Sport Compact feature races. I did though get the chance to shake the hand of former track owner Bob Scott and quickly thank him for all of his years of running the “Bullring on Broadway”. I look forward to my next trip to Quincy that is planned for Thursday June 5^th for the POWRi Midget show!

After giving a presentation to a group of thirty people, I left Columbus, Ohio, at 4:35 p.m. Wednesday headed for St. Louis where I had a morning meeting scheduled for Thursday. I knew that the Tony Hulman Classic featuring USAC Sprint Cars and UMP Modifieds was being held at the Terre Haute Action track that evening, but with thunderstorms dotting both Indiana and Ohio I really did not think that the event would have a chance to run due to the weather. Driving west on Interstate 70 I was four miles south of a radar indicated tornado near Springfield, Ohio, and then twenty minutes later I could see the dust rolling off the wind gust of a severe thunderstorm in Huber Heights. As I approached Indianapolis I had to slow down to a crawl for torrential rain as the entire city was under a flash flood warning, but still the storms were staying just north of Terre Haute.

The lightning was flashing no more than twenty miles to the north as I made my way into the track at 8:25 and Ken Schrader was leading the UMP Modified feature that was working under a caution midway through the race. Michigan driver Jacob Poel, whom we just saw at Quincy a few nights earlier, was running second with Kenny Wallace in third. Once back to racing Poel applied the pressure to Schrader, but when Poel jumped the turn four cushion coming to the white flag this one looked to be all over as Schrader pulled away by about six car lengths down the back straightaway. Poel had other ideas though as he drove deeeeeeeeeep into turn three, slid up the track and in turn four his right front wheel made contact with Schrader’s left rear sending the NASCAR veteran into a spin. Poel was able to stay moving and when the yellow flag came out we all waited to see how the incident would be handled.

To my surprise not only was Poel left out front for the one lap restart, Schrader never truly made it to the back of the fourteen car lineup as he was in ninth when the green and white flag waved simultaneously. Wallace made a challenge going into turn three on the final lap and I wondered if he might return the favor for his old friend Schrader, but “Herman” drove him clean and Jacob Poel was the race winner. It was no surprise when Schrader pulled alongside him during the cool down lap to express his opinion and Poel was roundly booed during the victory lane interview we he said “I’m sorry, I didn’t really mean to do that. It was a pretty much my fault.” Ya think?

With his travels Poel is obviously on a mission to win the UMP Modified National points title although this is likely one win that he would probably like to give back. And he also might want to be aware of where the Federated Auto Parts #9 of Schrader is the next time that they race each other.

By keeping an eye on Twitter while I drove only slightly above the speed limit, I knew that Brady Bacon had set a new track record during qualifying so obviously the track was fast tonight. And sometimes, especially with sprint cars winged or non-winged, a fast track does not produce much passing and that was the case tonight. Kevin Thomas Jr. opened up a nice lead even after a pair of cautions, but when he made the wrong decision behind a lapped car with eight laps remaining “The People’s Champ” Dave Darland was there to pounce. The caution waved again a lap later and with a clear track ahead of him there would be no stopping Darland from taking the win over Thomas. Bacon came from sixth to finish third, Jon Stanbrough was fourth while Chase Stockon finished where he started in fifth.

It was nice to finally see some racing at Terre Haute as I had been rained out in two previous attempts to experience the historic speedway and this will officially give me at least one “new track” on my list for 2014.

The next track that I see will be the blue oval at Drake Stadium as I make my now annual visit to the Iowa High School State Track and Field Championships on Saturday. My hometown school Mount Pleasant has several opportunities to take away some gold in both the girls and the boys meet. Then on Sunday night it will be a short trip down to 34 Raceway in Burlington as the Brockway Mechanical and Roofing Sprint Invaders return to action on the high-banked 3/8-mile oval.

Enjoy your Memorial Day weekend and please do remember the meaning of this holiday!