I consider myself to be a very lucky race fan as for the second year in a row I was able to attend 66 events on the season and still somehow stay married to the prettiest lady I have ever seen! Last year as I recapped the 2014 season I predicted that my count would drop some due to a ten day trip to Italy and a week full of Steamboat Days concerts in June, plus the fact that I was just going to be more selective about where and when I would go to the races in 2015. However, with some very favorable early Spring weather along with one of the driest Octobers on record, I was able to go to more events both early and late in the season than I ever would have imagined resulting in the exact same number of races as last year!
My 2015 season started out with a "new to me" race track as I made the trip out to Beatrice, Nebraska, on March 13th and was greeted with temperatures in the 70's at an event that is more accustomed to seeing snow flurries. And there was so much racing in one night that I ended up writing two blogs to get it all covered. As we all know the weather around here in late March and all the way through April can be pretty fickle and I am always amazed that whenever we have one of those Springs where cold and rainy weather wipes out many of the early season events there are people on the forum boards who will say that we just shouldn't schedule any races around here until May. Really?? I saw some of my favorite events of the season between March 13th and April 11th as I tallied nine events during that four week period. And in fact, if you allow me to throw in the second half of March with April, I saw 14 races during that period, one more than I attended in both July and August where I went to 13 nights each. Of course my busiest stretch still comes during the two weeks of the Knoxville Sprint Car Nationals as this year I went to ten races in the twelve nights from August 4th through August 15th.
This year's 66 races were viewed at 23 different tracks in six states; Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Florida. Once again it was the Knoxville Raceway topping the list with eleven nights while the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa was close behind with eight. My closest Friday (Lee County Speedway), Saturday (34 Raceway) and Sunday (Quincy Raceways) options were next in line with five nights each while I made my way to both the Benton County Speedway in Vinton and the Scotland County Speedway in Memphis, Missouri, four times. I visited my "home track" from my younger years, the West Liberty Raceway, three times and two trips were made to each of the following: Davenport Speedway, Farley Speedway, Iowa State Fair Speedway, Cedar County Raceway and the Dubuque Speedway. Also sprinkled in along the way were single visits to East Moline, Boone, Independence, Bloomfield, Britt, Farmer City and the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway. Besides Beatrice, the other two tracks that I made it to for the first time this year were the Dells Raceway Park in Wisconsin Dells and Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola for two days of Snowball Derby racing. Interestingly enough my new tracks were my first event of the year and the last three of the season. Of course I was again disappointed that the Turkey Bowl in Springfield was postponed not once, but twice on dates where I could have attended before finally being run on a beautiful Saturday in December while I was at the Derby.
I have often said how nice it is to be a race fan here in the upper Midwest as we can usually find a race to go to on a night other than Saturday, the race night that most fans in the rest of the country are limited to. This past season my race nights were distributed as follows:
Monday - 1
Tuesday - 6
Wednesday - 10
Thursday - 8
Friday - 14
Saturday - 15
Sunday -12
Frankly, I was a bit surprised that Saturday had the highest total as I thought that Wednesday would lead the list.
I also had the pleasure to be either the lead or co-announcer at fifteen of these events in 2015 and hopefully there will continue to be opportunities to do that again next season!
Those of you who have followed the Back Stretch over the years, even in the Hawkeye Racing News days, know that this is where I will throw out some things that I might not have liked in general during the past season and thankfully this year's list is short and pretty minor.
My biggest gripe, likely because it is the most recent, seldom applies to short track racing anyway since there are very few events that have both reserved seating and near capacity crowds. Tracks like Five Flags and Knoxville, as well most stadiums that don't have individual seats but instead have bleachers with numbers on them need to do either one of two things going forward. They either need reduce the number of "seats" within a row by placing more space between the numbers, or they need to eliminate the stadium seats that either people pay a premium for when they buy their ticket (Kinnick), or that they bring in with them to the races. The last three times now that I have had a reserved seat for a race I have been miserable due to the complete lack of space remaining for me to sit in. First of all these spaces are apparently measured out for people who are at their doctor's recommended weight for their height and, guess what, a significant segment of the clientele who go to the races (including me!) do not meet this criteria. Then, to make matters worse, people are now bringing these seats in with them that take up the full allotted seating space, and then some, whether the person who has the seat needs it or not!
Case in point, two weeks ago at Five Flags, the lady of the couple sitting next to me in seats five and six was tiny and without her stadium seat probably would have still been rather comfortable sitting next to the guy next her who said it himself as he passed by us to get to his seat, "big boy coming through", was a bit heavier than most. Sadly for him the two guys sitting in eight and nine were even bigger and when the first caution waved he made his way back out of our row with his belongings in hand and never returned.
Even with him no longer there the row was still tight, for me at least, because people on each side of me had those damn seats! So promoters please, if you are going to have reserved seats, either space them appropriately for your clientele, forbid the use of stadium seats, or both! I'll believe it when I see it though......
My other one is minor as well and has been something that I have written about in the past and I am sure that it is a matter of opinion as one of my good friends who is an excellent scorer obviously has the exact opposite opinion based upon the race format that he uses. And I am fine with that.
Other than an event like Boone where there are hundreds of cars, there should never be more than one B-Main in order to allow the best of your cars to advance to the feature. When you run two B-Mains you have the risk of an inbalance of talent between the two, the possibility of more scratches in one rather than the other, or both. So if you have 25 to 40 cars in your class, run one B-Main and let the best drivers advance. If you have more than 40 cars then have a C-Main to determine your B-Main lineup.
I went to a touring Modified event this past season who, with a field of 29 cars, drew for the starting positions in four heats and only transferred three out of each heat. Then they split the remaining 17 cars into two B-Mains with nine (the drivers who did not transfer from heats one and two) in one and eight (the drivers who didn't transfer from heats three and four) in the other. All nine cars came to the track in B-Main #1 where six would transfer while in B-Main #2 only six cars started and all cars transferred. Sound fair to you?
Wouldn't it have made more sense to run three heats with the top six to the A and the top four to redraw, then run one B-Main (11 cars, I wonder if they can handle it??) and the top four transferring? Yes, it would have and the "best" 22 cars on that night would have raced their way into the feature rather than having a couple make it by default.
Oh well, if that is all that I have to bitch about then it must have been a pretty good season highlighted by this three-wide finish and I am already looking ahead to 2016. Perhaps a weekend road trip in February to kick things off? I already know that I am going to miss the IMCA Frostbusters due to a wedding that we are travelling to, and will my new infatuation with pavement Late Model racing continue to grow?
Here's wishing all of you a very Merry Christmas and thank you so much for reading the Back Stretch. Go Hawks beat Stanford!
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