Tuesday Notebook: July 8, 2014

A little bit about a lot of things on a beautiful Tuesday morning, hopefully leading to a perfect night of racing at the West Liberty Raceway.

If you are a fan of Dirt Late Model racing you really need to be a subscriber to Dirt On Dirt as no place else on the net will provide you with the information, results and video from this niche of our sport than will Michael Rigsby, Todd Turner, Kevin Kovac, Andy Savery and the rest of the crew.

I enjoy watching the videos from tracks that I have not yet been to in person to see what they look like and to get a feel for how racy they might be and one video in particular from this past weekend really caught my eye. It was from the Lucas Oil Late Model Series event at 201 Speedway in Sitka, Kentucky. The place was packed and as the feature field rumbled to the green flag and raced through turns one and two, the dust cloud that was kicked up was massive. Now seeing a big plume of dust on the opening lap of a Late Model race is not that uncommon as usually that dust is "blown off" in the first couple of laps and then conditions improve considerably after that. Not in this instance! The dust became so bad that you could barely see the cars on the back stretch and even announcer James Essex sounded like he could not really see who was who during the closing laps of the event. It was still a fun race to watch.....on video.....as Jimmy Owens came from a ninth row starting spot to make a late pass for the win as even though the dust was flying there were still multiple grooves around the race track.

Today it was no surprise that one of the stories on Dirt On Dirt was that the 201 Speedway would shutdown for the month of July to put new clay onto the track in an effort to resolve the dusty conditions and will reopen on August 2nd for a $5,000-to-win Super Late Model program.

Dust is a sensitive issue when it comes to dirt track racing. I know that 98.7% of the people who read The Back Stretch are considered to be die-hard dirt track fans who are most likely to say "hey, it ain't racing if there isn't a little dirt at the bottom of your beer" and would likely chastise me, or anybody else who would suggest that it is a problem. But guess what, it is a problem that needs to be resolved if we want our sport to even maintain the current level of attendance that we already know is too low to be successful. I listen to people pontificate as to how we get "the casual fan" out to the track more often and there are all kinds of things that are mentioned that really don't have much to do with the racing. But as soon as someone says something about reducing the amount of dust, those same people immediately reverse their stance and act like if you can't stand a little dust then maybe you should stay home. Really? I have been to a couple of shows in the past month where even I got to the point where I didn't think that I could stand it much longer and there would be no way that any "casual fan" who happened to have been drawn out for the races on those particular nights would ever consider coming back. Sure, I knew that weather conditions leading up to the event and, or during the event had everything to do with the higher than normal volume of flying dust, but that "first time" or "casual" fan would not know that and even if they did, they probably wouldn't care. You had your chance to earn a new fan and that chance blew away, like dust in the wind. So promoters, do your absolute best to keep the dust to a minimum and die-hard fans, leave your "If There Ain't Dirt In Your Beer Then It Ain't Racin" t-shirts in the closet. After all, we don't want to suggest that this is how it is supposed to be!

To add insult to injury, those two dust storms followed intermissions of forty-five minutes and fifty-five minutes and both were on a night when most fans would have to get up and go to work the next day.

What did you do on Sunday? I am guessing that you were nowhere near as busy as Austin Dillon. The current NASCAR Sprint Cup Rookie-of-the-Year leader ran the rain delayed Coke Zero 400 at Daytona during the day and apparently soon after that race was cut short by even more heavy rain Dillon found an opening in the weather there that allowed him to get to Haubstadt, Indiana, in time to run the UMP Summer Nationals show at Tri-State Speedway Sunday night. Austin is no stranger to the dirt tracks having run both a Late Model and a UMP Modified the past few years, but his dirt schedule has been much more limited with his move up to Cup racing in 2014. He showed no signs of rust though on the well-manicured Tri-State quarter-mile as he passed Tanner English and Randy Korte in the closing laps to finish second to Billy Moyer.

Speaking of the Sprint Cup RoY battle, Dillon recently regained the top spot in that race after Kyle Larson suffered through a few "bad" events. I enjoy listening to Scott Traylor and Kirk Elliott, The Racin' Boys every Saturday morning from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. and for the past several weeks thay have spent at least a couple of minutes of the show discussing when Larson's first Sprint Cup win will happen. And, in each of the past few weeks, one of them suggests that it just might happen that weekend. I too believe that Kyle Larson will win a Sprint Cup race in the not so distant future, but if I predict that it will happen each and every week, when it does can I still say "I told you so"?

Fact: Fourteen of the eighteen UMP Summer Nationals events held through July 6th have been won by a driver starting on the front row. Three have been won by a driver starting on the second row meaning that a heat race winner has won seventeen of eighteen features. One race was won by a driver starting in row three and that was Shannon Babb at Farley after heat race winner Billy Moyer blew a right rear tire with nine laps remaining. Now I am not shining a light on these statistics to say that the racing has been bad and there is likely nothing that UMP can do about the format and still keep the big name drivers happy, but a fan can always dream!

My son Morgan has always wanted to make the trip over to Indiana for two or three nights of Indiana Sprint Week and he has this coming weekend in mind with Gas City I-69 Speedway on Friday night and Kokomo Speedway on Saturday night. The tough thing for me is that to do that I would need to miss the Sprint Invaders at Tipton on Friday night and the UMP Summer Nationals at 34 Raceway on Saturday night. Either way we go it will be a great doubleheader so at this point we are going to watch the weather forecasts and make a decision on Friday morning.

I do know where I plan to be for four nights next week and that will be with what I believe has now been officially tagged Hawkeye Modified Speed Week. It starts on Sunday night with the annual Hogan Memorial at the Benton County Speedway in Vinton, an event that I have completely enjoyed attending before and who knows, I might end up there again this coming Sunday. Then on Monday the Hawkeye Dirt Tour Modifieds will be at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson followed with a Tuesday show at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. With the Southern Iowa Fair going on, Osky will be in action once again on its regular race night, Wednesday, with the IMCA Modifieds gunning for $1,000 and to make things even bigger the IMCA Late Models will be on the card both nights. Then on Thursday night one of my favorite events that I mark on the calendar each year will take place with the running of the Harris Clash at the Knoxville Raceway. It will be a very busy week for the IMCA Modifieds and I will be interested to see who might pull in from some distant locations to run these events.

Speaking of Knoxville, Nationals time is quickly approaching with the Arnold Motor Supply 360 Nationals coming up on July 31st, August 1st and August 2nd. The Capitani Classic will be run for the third time on Sunday August 3rd and the 54th Annual FVP Knoxville Nationals presented by Casey's General Stores will take place August 6th, 7th , 8th and 9th. If you do not yet have your tickets for the 410 Nationals I suggest you visit the website soon and get them purchased as I noticed when I bought mine a couple of weeks ago the remaining selection was more depleted than it was a year ago at this time. I absolutely love my two weeks at Knoxville each August!

I noticed that another track recently closed down its Facebook page due to all of the negative comments, bashing and name-calling that was taking place on it. The one thing that I will say about people doing this on Facebook is that they are not Anonymous so they cannot be accused of being an AWP. It appears that our internet bitchers and whiners are becoming more confident as time goes on and are now actually willing to put their name to it. I'm pretty sure that this is not a good thing...... I know of at least two promoters who have adopted a social media policy that allows them to suspend a driver from competition for him or his fans making negative comments on Facebook or on an internet forum. I have a couple of ideas of how I would handle my "social media policy" if and when I should ever decide to promote a track again, but I will hold onto those until that time comes. I have to be unique somehow!!

Taking three of my favorite ladies with me to West Liberty tonight for the Deery Brothers Summer Series Late Models and IMCA Modifieds. Tuesday night racing and the world's best tenderloins, how can you beat it? Hope to see you there!