Sunday was a perfect day for a Fall drive with the foliage in full color and a high cloud cover filtering the sunshine. Many memories of Sunday afternoon's spent at Hawkeye Raceway near Blue Grass came rushing back, especially as I drove by the old entrance to the facility that is now a housing development and I was happy that this old tradition of daytime racing in October was coming back to life, at least for one day, as I continued my trip north to the Jackson County Speedway in Maquoketa.
The promotional group headed up by Timmy Current and Ryan Duhme, better know as "The Darkside" were hosting the Fall Bash at the quarter-mile oval in the Timber City and a good field of cars were on hand to do battle here for one more time in the 2014 season.
The Hobby Stocks would contest the first of six feature races on the day with Lane Vohringer using his pole starting position to snare the early lead. Jacob Keiser, making his first ever trip to Maquoketa, drove by Vohringer on lap three and then weaved his way through traffic the remaining nine laps to score the win. Dustin Chapman started seventh and finished second, Daniel Wauters was third while Lane Vohringer and Kris Vohringer completed the top five. Keiser had to delay the celebration of his Hobby Stock victory though as he had also purchased an extra pit pass and had entered the Outlaw Super Bomber division for the day and that feature would be up later in the program.
A six-pack of Mod Lites raced for twelve laps with pole-starter Brian Schnell leading from flag-to-flag to take the win. Rob Guss, Mike Morrow, Dan Guss, Dustin Edwards and A.J. Pappas completed the running order.
The Sport Mod division had twenty-nine entries with four heats and two B-Mains trimming the field to twenty for the fifteen-lap main event. Bryce Garnhart drew the pole position and he would lead through three early cautions. Once the green flag stayed out for some consecutive laps Austin Moyer worked the high line around the speedway trying to get around Garnhart who was hugging the bottom. The caution waved for a fourth time on lap ten when Scott Busch spun in turn one and following the restart Moyer again went to the top side using every inch of the racing surface to try to get some momentum to pass Garnhart. Bryce was smooth around the bottom though and the short way around would win out as Garnhart scored the victory despite the gallant effort from Moyer. Tony Olson started ninth and worked his way up to third at the checkers just ahead of K.C. Ansel. Dave McCalla had to win the first B-Main to qualify and he then advanced from row seven up to fifth.
The Outlaw Super Bombers were up next and this field of cars was a true smorgasbord as you also had IMCA legal Stock Cars and Hobby Stocks mixed in for the 15-lap distance. Once again the pole-sitter grabbed the early and this time it was local driver Jarrett Franzen. Nathan Hall advanced quickly from fifth to second in his sharp black #140 and he then applied the pressure to the leader. The race was halted on lap seven when Steve Gustaf hopped the track tire guarding the infield coming off of turn two and went for a hard barrel roll, but thankfully the driver emerged from the wreckage uninjured. Once back to green, as Franzen hugged the bottom Hall tried to work the next groove up and with two laps remaining it looked as though Hall might just make it stick as he nosed ahead going down the back stretch. Franzen was not about to give in though and he drove his #33 just a little bit deeper into turn three to regain the advantage and he then fought off one last run by Hall to take the hard fought victory. Hall gave the winner a thumbs up in victory lane as his sportsmanlike challenge came up just short in second, Joe Bonney started eighth and finished third, Erick Knutsen was the highest finishing Stock Car in fourth and Chance Huston took fifth. Jacob Keiser had his Hobby Stock in the top five for most of the race only to slip to seventh in the final few laps.
The Four Stock feature saw the fourth-starting Tristan Clark move quickly to the lead at the drop of the green and the nine-car field then ran ten laps of non-stop racing with Clark taking the win by a full straightaway. Cameron Poci was the runner-up followed by Connor Wahl, Shawn Pappas and Mike Woolley.
Twenty Modifieds lined up for twenty laps to close out the evening with Tyler Soppe and his Sport Mod starting on the pole next to Jeremiah Hurst behind the wheel of Tyler Madigan's #21M. Hurst would outrun Soppe to the point as the race was slowed by three early cautions. Once everybody settled in the event would stay green with drivers finding racing lines from the bottom to the top around the speedway evidenced by the three-wide battle for fifth between Brandon Durbin, Ray Cox Jr. and Kyle Brown with six laps remaining. That was definitely the race to watch as Hurst had checked out in the lead and Ryan DeShaw was comfortably in second and despite some lapped traffic down the stretch that would be how they would finish with Jeremiah Hurst taking the win. Cox not only prevailed in that three-wide battle, he also picked up two more spots late to finish third after starting tenth, Kyle Brown was fourth and kudos to Tyler Soppe who raced his Sport Mod in for fifth.
Ray Cox Jr. had a teammate for the day as Corey Cox made the trip in from Littleton, Colorado, to drive Ray's backup car. Apparently the two drivers started communicating on Facebook a couple of years ago with the same last name being the initial conversation and it grew to the point where Ray invited Corey over to race one of his cars sometime at his hometown track of Maquoketa. Corey, a past Sport Mod track champion at the Phillips County Raceway in Holyoke, Colorado, made the trip in, started fifteenth and made some early progress before fading back to sixteenth at the finish. Now we will have to see if Ray makes a trip west to do some racing soon.
A special thanks to the Darkside for their hospitality and for putting on a Sunday show in October that stirred up so many memories. It used to be that the Hawkeye Raceway Sunday series was just about the only thing going on around here in October, but not anymore and that is a good thing!
Don't forget that you have one more opportunity to go racing in the state of Iowa this season as the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson will once again host "Shiverfest" this Saturday October 25th.
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