Repeat championships by Justin Kay and Damon Murty and Terry
McCarl’s record extending twelfth championship that was wrapped up in a
dramatic fashion and seven “first time” champions are the lead stories from the
2014 All Iowa Points tabulation.
No driver has won as many All Iowa Points championships as
has Terry McCarl and he added to that total in 2014 by scoring just enough
points in the final 410 Sprint Car feature of the season to edge out Ian Madsen
by just one marker. Going into that final event held at the Quincy Raceways on
September 21st, McCarl trailed Madsen by two points and needed to
finish fourth to earn a tie and third or better to take the title outright since
Madsen was not in attendance. As the white flag waved in the feature event the
veteran driver from Altoona was running fourth, but when the second-place car
of Billy Balog went over the top of turn two on that final lap it allowed
McCarl to move to third and win the championship by one point. Terry would be
the first to tell you that this was an off-year for him as he only picked up
two victories on the season, but with eight runner-up finishes as part of his
twenty-one top fives it was just enough to secure AIP title number twelve, now
four more than Hall of Fame Late Model drivers Gary Webb and Ed Sanger. Madsen
won’t soon forget his fine 2014 season that included six feature wins and the
Knoxville Raceway track championship. Six-time AIP champion Mark Dobmeier was
right in the hunt until the end as well finishing just six points out of first
following fourteen top-fives including six feature wins. Either McCarl or
Dobmeier has now won the All Iowa Points 410 Sprint Car title every year but
one since 1998 as Wayne Johnson broke through for the 2005 championship.
Central Illinois driver Chris Urish was the top new comer to the 410 Sprint
points finishing in a tie for 14th.
Back in 2008 Justin Kay made the huge jump from the Four
Cylinder division to a Late Model. The success was limited for the next few
years before things started to click in 2012 and over the past two years the
soft-spoken driver from Wheatland has become the dominant driver in eastern
Iowa IMCA Late Model racing. With forty-seven top-five finishes including an
amazing thirty-one feature wins Kay adds his second straight All Iowa Points
Late Model championship to his resume in 2014 along with his second IMCA
National Late Model title and his first Deery Brothers Summer Series crown. The
most successful Late Model driver in Iowa since 2000, Todd Cooney had yet
another impressive season with thirty-nine top-five finishes including nineteen
feature wins and while his point total was sixty-six more than Mike Murphy Jr.
in third, it was still fifty points shy of the champion Kay. Murphy was the
best of the rest taking third in the final rundown collecting twelve checkered
flags along the way. John Emerson of Waterloo is this year’s Late Model
Rookie-of-the-Year finishing in a tie for 26th.
In early June the All Iowa Points Stock Car race had six
drivers within six points of each other. Then Damon Murty left them all in the
dust as he scored more points than any driver across all divisions and won his
second straight AIP championship. “The Chelsea Charger” was not only hard to
beat on his weekly tracks, but also when he took to the road during Fair Race
season and come specials time during the Fall. His impressive 241-point total
was built upon an amazing sixty-two top-five finishes that included twenty-eight
feature wins and those totals might have been even higher if he would not have
been taking care of business in the farm fields over the final three weeks of
the season. The 2012 Stock Car champ Donavon Smith edged out Granada,
Minnesota, driver Derek Green by one-point for this year’s runner-up honors.
Smith had forty-five top-fives and fourteen feature wins while Green racked up
eleven wins and forty-three top-fives. Smith’s brother, David Smith, was just
one-point behind Green in fourth while two-time champion Brian Blessington was
nine more points back in fifth. Four-time All Iowa Points Hobby Stock champion
Devin Smith had an impressive rookie season in the Stock Cars finishing in
seventh.
Seven drivers earned their first ever All Iowa Points championship
in 2014 headed up by Modified driver Chris Abelson of Sioux City. Abelson was
close to an AIP title twice in the Limited Modified division finishing fourth
in 2006, and second to Brett Moffitt in 2007 and through the first two months
of 2014 it looked as though he would be chasing Jesse Sobbing throughout the
year. That started to change in June though as Abelson started to beat Sobbing
when they raced head-to-head and the wins piled up even when they weren’t on
the same track together. The point battle stayed close until late August when
Abelson pulled away for a comfortable thirty-point margin over the defending
AIP Modified champion Sobbing. Fifty-five top-fives including thirty wins
propelled Ableson to the championship over Sobbing who had nineteen wins and
forty-nine top-five finishes. It stopped a string of four straight AIP
championships for Sobbing who won three Limited Modified titles in a row before
also prevailing in his rookie season in the Modifieds. Northeast Iowa veteran
Troy Cordes was a solid third in the final rundown with nineteen wins and
forty-four top fives. Nick Roberts edged out Cole Ferguson by just two-points
to be the top ranked Modified rookie tied for 28th.
The points chase in the Limited Modifieds was similar to the
Stock Cars in that several drivers were in contention going into the summer
before one driver emerged from the pack to put things away before the end of
August. Clint Luellen of Minburn staked his claim on his first All Iowa Points
title by winning twenty-two features and finishing in the top five forty-six
times to win by thirty-seven points. The battle for second stayed tight though
as only eleven points separated the drivers ranked second through sixth with
Brett Lowry using his fourth-place finish at Shiverfest to edge out Bryce Garnhart for second. Lowry actually had more top-five finishes than did the
champ with forty-nine and he also had twelve feature wins. Garnhart also had
twelve wins and sixteen runner-up finishes as part of his forty top-fives. Austin
Moyer who held the lead in early August before taking a month off was one-point
behind Garnhart in fourth while Tony Dunker was not far back in fifth. Former
Late Model driver Joey Gower was the top newcomer to the division finishing in
10th while Jake McBirnie was the top rookie in 61st.
The Hobby Stock battle looked like it might come down to the
final events in October, but when three-time champion Shannon Anderson rolled
his car hard on the opening night of the Musco Fall Challenge in Oskaloosa his season
came to an end and Dustin Griffiths of Ottumwa capitalized to overtake Anderson
for his first All Iowa Points championship. Griffiths posted forty-nine top
five finishes along the way including twenty feature wins to score ten more
points than Anderson who had twenty-seven wins and forty-three top fives. BenjiIrvine had a solid season with sixteen feature wins to hold down the third
spot. Asphalt racer Jim Hanson of Cedar Rapids was the top ranked rookie in the
division in a tie for 51st.
Carthage, Illinois, driver Austen Becerra dominated the Four
Cylinder standings from start to finish to secure his first championship and he
will look to build upon that momentum in a new division in 2015 as he has
already turned laps in the Sport Mod that he has purchased. Austen collected
thirty feature wins against fields of ten cars or more in 2014 and easily
outdistanced northwest Iowa competitor Jay DeVries by eighty points. DeVries
tallied thirteen “full field” wins this season and he finished just one point ahead
of the 2009 and 2010 champion Nate Coopman. Drew Johnson of Sioux City and
Jacob Kofoot of Bode were the top two new drivers to earn points in the
division finishing 18th and 19th respectively.
The championship in the 360 Sprint Car division essentially
came to down the final events of the season as the driver who sat atop the
standings for most of the year, Jon Agan, needed to finish fourth to tie, or
third or better at 34 Raceway in Burlington September 27th to
overtake Gregg Bakker and win his first All Iowa Points Championship. Agan just
needed to start the feature race to secure the Sprint Invader championship and
he was leading the first half of the race comfortably before a caution waved.
During the caution Agan’s right rear tire went flat and under series rules you
cannot go to the pits for any reason and return to the track. That allowed
Bakker to hold on to the top spot in the All Iowa Points and despite the fact
that he has accumulated more points than any other 360 Sprint driver from 2000
through 2014, this is the first All Iowa championship for the driver from Sioux
Falls, South Dakota. Bakker had two wins among his fifteen top-five finishes
while Agan also had fifteen top-fives and two wins. Third place finisher Kaley
Gharst had three wins and one less top-five than the two drivers ahead of him. You
have to drop down to 44th to find the top newcomer to the division,
former 410 regular and Arizona transplant Calvin Landis.
With Eagle Raceway going to the Racesaver 305 division for
their weekly shows the last two years, the balance of power in the All Iowa
Points 305 class has shifted west and southeastern Nebraska driver Clint Benson
is the 2014 champion. Benson started the season red hot at Eagle and then made
some successful trips to the Iowa State Fair Speedway as well to build a big
lead the held up to the end. Eight wins and twenty-one top-fives gave Benson a
16-point margin of victory over former World of Outlaws regular Jason Martin
who won eight times in his twelve top-five finishes. Iowa State Fair Speedway
champion Matt Moro finished in the third spot and the longtime 410 and 360
competitor was also the top newcomer to the 305 division with the Des Moines
track adding the class in 2014.
Dan Keltner was the runaway champion in the Mod Lite
division by winning twenty-one feature races and finishing in the top five
thirty-two times. Jimmy May was second with just one less top-five finish than
Keltner, but with nine feature wins he finished 44 points off the champion’s
pace. Charlie Brown was just one point behind May in third and he also had nine
feature wins. After two years of tracking the division, the Mod Lites will be
dropped from the All Iowa Points due to the split in the rules between the cars
that run the northeast Iowa tracks and those that run in central and southeast
Iowa.
As a note of interest, while they came close, this is the
first year since 2007 that at least one of the All Iowa Points titles was not
claimed by one of the Smith brothers from Lake City.
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