It was a wise move for Jerry Hoffman and Doug Bland to postpone the Turkey Bowl for one week as it was a pretty decent day in Springfield for racing on Saturday and that drew just shy of 150 cars in four divisions for the annual event. NASCAR star Ken Schrader towed his Modified in with a pickup truck and an open trailer to later drive away from the rest of a 50-car field to take the win. Robbie Reed slipped by Steve Picou late to finish second while Terry Schultz and Bobby Pearish completed the top five. Jesse Hoeft made the long pull down from Forest City, Iowa, to finish eighth while other Iowa travelers Shane Demey and Shawn Ritter were 13th and 16th respectively. Illinois driver Lance Dehm proclaimed this to be his last race ever and he finished eleventh after starting from the front row.
Two of the best B-Mod drivers in the region, or the Midwest for that matter, went at it in the main event for that division with J.C. Morton prevailing over Kris Jackson. Morton, the 2016 USRA National Champion, was the best of a whopping sixty drivers who signed in for the event. Minnesota driver Parker Hale finished third followed by Maik Hailmann and Josh Stephens. Austen Becerra, a regular competitor at Donnellson, Burlington and Quincy started from the pole and finished in tenth.
Twenty-three Late Models were in action with Scott Crigler chasing down Dewayne Kiefer to score the win. Young Logan Martin got past Kiefer late to finish second with Jacob Magee and Dustin Mooneyham next in line. Grasyn Cox from nearby Joplin won the Legend Car main event with Kalona, Iowa's Warren Ropp in second. Watching some of the videos it looked like it a got a bit foggy, but the racing was multi-grooved and I hope that in 2017 the event can be run on the Saturday preceding Thanksgiving as it is now traditionally scheduled.
The big race coming up this weekend is the Snowball Derby at Five Flags Speedway and, even if you are not a big follower of the pavement pounders, I encourage you to check out the coverage this week at Speed51
Arkansas driver Jeff Taylor swept the two nights of IMCA Modified action during the Turkey Classic at the Cocopah Speedway in Arizona. I sure do hope that there were a lot of people watching the pay-per-view on SpeedShiftTV because on the video highlight that I saw today it looked like there were very few fans in the stands as Taylor took the checkered flag.
While listening to Track Talk with the Racin' Boys this past Saturday morning I learned that Jon Boller will be promoting a weekly show at the U.S. 36 Raceway in Cameron, Missouri in 2017. Boller, a racer and car owner himself who said that he had fifteen cars racing this past season during the interview, will present a weekly Friday night offering of Modifieds, B-Mods, Stock Cars, E-Mods and Hobby Stocks at the track that has only hosted a handful of special events the past several years. Boller said that he will work closely with the I-35 Speedway in Winston, a track that is USRA sanctioned, I did not hear him say whether or not U.S. 36 will also be sanctioned since it will be racing the same night as the Lakeside Speedway just down the road.
So, while we seem to notice it more when a track closes, here is another one that is coming back to life with weekly racing which by my count so far puts us at "plus two" for the region in 2017. We will see if that holds up.
Promoter Mick Trier confirmed on an Iowastockcars.com forum thread this weekend that the Benton County Speedway in Vinton will add Late Models to the weekly Sunday night shows in 2017. I would link the thread, but don't want to confuse the issue. More info on the addition coming soon!
The Elko Speedway just south of the Twin Cities announced that they will drop the Super Late Model division from their weekly shows in 2017, despite the fact that the track averaged 18 cars in 2016. It was one of only a couple of tracks that had both the Supers and the "Big 8" Late Model divisions running weekly, so look for the other division to grow in numbers.
It is now official, Joey Saldana will continue to compete with the World of Outlaws now driving a car fielded by Matt Wood and Ricky Stenhouse Jr. It was also announced today that Dale Blaney will be the new driver for the Zemco #1z team in 2017.
The ASCS National Series roster of regular drivers will grow by two in 2017 as both Harli White and Ray Allen Kulhanek have stated their intentions to run the Tour next season.
"The Godfather" Dave Moody had this well written tribute to Tony Stewart as he says "goodbye" to Cup racing and "hello" to his roots.
Randy Mooneyham has sold the MARS Late Model series to a group headed up by Clarksville Speedway promoter William Scogin who will split the series into an East and West division. The first draft of the West schedule is out and includes many of the traditional events that have graced the MARS schedule the past few years including the annual Slocum 50 at 34 Raceway on April 15th. The East division will stick pretty close to Tennessee with both divisions kicking off the 2017 season at the traditional Toilet Bowl Classic in Clarksville on March 3rd and 4th.
Dirt On Dirt announced their top five drivers of 2016 yesterday with Josh Richards getting the nod as Driver of the Year. Their top five matches up to mine except for the fact that they list Bobby Pierce as a "regional" driver since he did not following either the Lucas Tour or the Outlaws thus moving Dennis Erb Jr. up from sixth to fifth.
No comments:
Post a Comment