Babb Sails To Prelim Win at Farmer City

With nearly everybody else running low, Shannon Babb went to the top line and sailed around the competition on his way to a $3,000 victory on the opening night of the Farmer City 74 Thursday. A strong field of 48 UMP Late Models signed in to compete tonight while at least four other drivers had their cars in the pits, but chose to wait until Friday's $20,000-to-win finale to compete.

Jimmy Mars and Tanner English would bring the field to green for the 35-lap race, but it would be Mason Zeigler who would drive under them to take the lead on lap one. The young driver out of Pennsylvania looked strong until the fifth starting Shannon Babb came charging up on the high side to drive around Zeigler on lap five. Babb's lead then grew quickly, so much so that on lap twelve he slipped off the top of turn two, but still had time to recover before Zeigler could get to him.

The caution waved on lap twenty when Mike Marlar slipped over the top of turn one and on the restart Billy Moyer relegated Zeigler to third and began to apply some pressure on Babb. That challenge was soon interrupted though when Bobby Pierce slipped off the top of turn one, slid across the old horse track and ended up against the guardrail. With just over an inch of rain falling here on Wednesday night, retrieving Pierce's damaged car became quite an adventure causing about a fifteen minute delay as two wrecker trucks would get stuck in the mud. Finally a tractor was brought out and using a tow rope to pull out the wrecker that had Pierce's car in tow, the long delay finally came to an end.

On this restart Zeigler would get the jump on Moyer and as those two swapped the second spot at least four times Babb pulled away to take his first win of 2017. Youth would prevail in the battle for second, Zeigler over Moyer while Jimmy Mars finished fourth. Ryan Unzicker also made the top side work for fifth, Tanner English was sixth, Dennis Erb Jr. finished seventh, Kevin Weaver was eighth, ninth went to Billy Drake and Chase Junghans completed the top ten.

After an opening lap skirmish eliminated a couple of top contenders the Pro Late Model feature went twenty laps non-stop and Allen Weisser fought off Myles Moos to score the win. Weisser was in control throughout until Moos was able to slip under him in turns one and two on the final lap. There was contact between the two exiting turn two as Weisser would shut the door going down the back stretch. Matt Taylor finished third, I believe that it was Dakota Ewing in fourth while Roben Huffman rounded out the top five.

Joe Brown went flag-to-flag to best a nine car field of UMP Street Stocks.

With plenty of moisture from the day before the quarter-mile was lightning fast and offered up some entertaining action throughout the evening. All six pole-sitters won the Late Model heats under the "qualify and then start the fast guys in front" format, but the final two heat winners really had to earn it. Tanner English and Dennis Erb Jr, waged a great side-by-side battle in the fifth heat before a mid-race caution allowed Erb to get a full car-length on English for the restart. Tanner was not to be denied though and he passed Erb on the final lap to get the win and allow him to draw the outside front row for the feature. Veteran drivers Billy Drake and Kevin Weaver then entertained the crowd in the sixth heat with Drake regaining the lead and the win.

Darrell Lanigan, Don O'Neal and Hudson O'Neal were all present, but sat out the night's activities as did Earl Pearson Jr. with the Moring Motorsports ride. That one was kind of a head scratcher. MARS was on hand tonight, along with the ALMS and I must say that I liked the fact that they ran two C-Mains to complete a sixteen car lineup for one single B-Main that transferred two to the feature.

Us fans in the stands had two great announcers that we could have listened to tonight, however since they were also on a live Pay Per View broadcast they catered toward that crowd rather than those who bought tickets and can only hear info like driver names and qualifying times during brief seconds of little or no engine noise. Of course it was during that down time that we were then treated to them welcoming viewers to the broadcast. This is a trend that I don't know if I can get used to and I still suggest to promoters that when having a live PPV you should let those announcers do their thing, but instead of having their voices on the P.A. as well, you should also have a public address announcer to handle the night for those in attendance.

Next up on the Back Stretch, weekly racing at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson where the forecast calls for near perfect racing weather on Friday night.