With the Knoxville Raceway taking the week off to recover from two full weeks of the 360 and 410 Sprint Car Nationals, the Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders traditionally stage their own "Nationals" weekend with either two or three consecutive events. This gives area fans the opportunity to keep the buzz going after two weeks of Sprint Car heaven, plus you never know who just might drop in to compete with the Invader regulars.
This year it would be two nights of action starting on Friday at the Pepsi Lee County Speedway in Donnellson followed up by Saturday's show at 34 Raceway near Burlington.
With rain in the forecast for Friday and then having it actually develop right around the speedway at six o'clock both the car count and the attendance may have suffered a bit. Checking the radar as I was doing live reports for one of the night's sponsors, KILJ radio, it was amazing to watch the line of storms blow up both in the sky and on my screen showing that if the track would have been located just five more miles to the south we all would have been headed on the way home due to a gully washer. It did rain quite hard at the track though, but only for a minute or so before sprinkles lingered a bit longer and that had an interesting effect on the racing surface as the night went along.
With the extra moisture the track was both a challenge and a blessing as each time the Sprints were on the track early, for hot laps and the heat races, they would dig out a big ridge that would then have to be box bladed and rolled back in so that the racing surface could continue to widen out. The extra efforts of the track crew may have added to the length of the program, but believe me the wait was well worth it as by feature time drivers could run high, low and pretty much in between. We saw one pack go down the front stretch four wide at one point and there were sliders and cross overs going on throughout the pack leading a couple of people to tell me afterward that it was the best Sprint Car race that they had ever seen!
Now, to be fair, in making that proclamation I am pretty sure that those two had not been at Knoxville for the Championship A-Main of the Nationals in 2016, but still it was high praise and well deserved as there was definitely plenty of action to entertain the crowd. It was unfortunate though that the top two drivers were taken out of the event late when a soon-to-be lapped car spun in turn one leaving leader Josh Schneiderman and challenger Ayrton Gennetten with little time to react. Both did a great job of avoiding major impact, but the contact that was made was enough to eliminate both of them from competition.
For Schneiderman it continued "one of those years" where the speed is there, but the results are not and for Gennetten it was a disappointing end for the 18-year-old third generation driver who was making his first Invaders appearance ever. The young man showed a lot of class in the pits afterward stating that he was more mad at himself for not being able to completely miss the spun car and he told both Bill Wright and I that he wants to come up from the Lake of the Ozarks area more in the future to race against the Invaders because he knows that it will only make him a better racer.
Jamie Ball would inherit the lead on the restart and with Chris Martin and Paul Nienheiser, this weekend's driver of the Scott Bonar owned #50, swapping the second spot back and forth he would run the final eight laps unchallenged to score the win. Click here for the story and full results from Bill W.
The five weekly divisions were also in action at Lee County and while the Stock Car count was lean, the battle between Jeremy Pundt and John Oliver Jr. was a good one with Oliver holding off Pundt by a car-length to take the win. With his own Obsession Race Cars #17 down from issues at Memphis on Thursday night, Brandon Lennox wheeled Kevin Tomlinson's Obsession #49 to victory in the Sport Mod main event. Josh Barnes started near the front and ran away with the Sport Compact feature as he gets tuned up to defend his IMCA Super Nationals title at Boone in a couple of weeks. Jeff Waterman took the win in the IMCA Modified feature that saw "The Bash Brothers", Cody and Brock Bauman both crack the top five in their first trip over from Eureka, Illinois, taking second and fifth respectively. Denny Woodworth dominated a seven car field in the Crate Late Model division, a class that I am surprised has not taken off like I thought it would. Woodworth was the only car not owned by someone who was there on opening night in 2016 when the class got its start and, in my opinion, one of things that should be changed to help promote the growth would be to ditch the weekly draw and redraw format and instead go to a point average invert similar to what the other classes run. This is something that is never popular with the drivers, at least those who want to be vocal about it, but something needs to be done to get this thing going a bit and that just might be it.
Next Friday night will be Season Championship night at Lee County with the winged 305 Sprints joining the action with the admission price at just five dollars! The track will then take the month of September off before coming back with two big special events in October, the 6th Annual Fall Extravaganza will be on the 6th and 7th while the annual running of Shiverfest will be on Saturday October 28th.
I thought that the Invader car count might push thirty on Saturday night, but it was still a stout field of twenty-five that were on hand at 34 Raceway especially when you compare it to other 360 shows in the region this weekend. Fifteen-year-old Giovanni Scelzi, or Gio as he prefers, was in the field for the first-time driving the BDS Motorsports car #1 and the young Californian, the son of former drag racing champion Gary Scelzi, was very impressive winning his heat race, the Budweiser Shake Up Dash and the 25-lap main event all in convincing fashion. Josh Schneiderman bounced back nicely to take the runner-up position while Paul Nienhesier charged up to third after starting fifteenth. Jeff Laue and his crew had the 3/8th-mile high banks as well manicured as I have seen it for Sprint Car racing and once again the action was intense with drivers again being able to use multiple lines on the speedway. The results definitely reflected the diversity in age, and gender, of the Sprint Invaders as the young lady from Springfield, 16-year-old Bailey Goldsberry also won a heat race as did the soon to be 50-year-old Harold Pohren. Tanner Gebhardt, who is just eighteen-years-old himself, led the opening laps before yielding to his younger challenger Scelzi, finished in the fourth spot in the feature as last year's Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders champion Chris Martin, who soon turns twenty, was fifth. Pohren continued to lead the charge of the older generation in the feature finishing in sixth. Again you will find the story and full results at OpenWheel101 and make sure to mark your calendar for the final two events on the 2017 Invaders schedule, Sunday September 17th at the Quincy Raceways and Saturday September 23rd at 34 Raceway.
With the nice track conditions the racing in the four other divisions at 34 was also very entertaining. In the IMCA Modifieds nobody drives this track harder than Brandon Rothzen either riding the cushion hard all the way around on both ends, or setting his car on the cushion in turns one and three and then diving to the bottom to exit turns two and four and he quickly moved to second after starting tenth in the feature. Pole-sitter Jonathan Huston was not about to give in though and he held off the challenge for several laps before Rothzen slipped by to take the win. Cody Bauman finished third to close out a good two night trip into Iowa.
Rothzen also debuted a Stock Car on this night, but had to drive quickly to the infield with a fire under the hood during his heat race. It was a surprise to see him come out to tag the twelve car field for the feature where the action was soon intense at the front as Jake Wenig was trying to hold off both Tom Bowling Jr. and John Oliver Jr. Those three were giving the fans a thrill going three-wide for the point on a couple of occasions before a caution interrupted the fun. On the restart as Wenig powered up off of turn four, his throttle linkage broke causing Bowling to turn him sideways where both Ray Raker and Shane Watts piled into the former leader. A flat tire sent Oliver to the pits as well and there to challenge the new leader Bowling was none other than Brandon Rothzen who was again trying that high-to-low line in the turns to try to make a pass. Bowling would have none of it though as he held his line to take the win while Oliver showed his strength by passing Rothzen late to finish second.
The Mini Hauler Trucks do some rubbin' and racin' which gets the crowd going and it was Drake Fenton taking the win while the IMCA Sport Mod feature was a good one as well. Division rookie Ron Kibbe held the lead early, but when he was under pressure from both Austen Becerra and Kyle Hill, Kibbe missed the cushion in turn one and gave up the lead. Becerra and Hill then battled the rest of the way, without contact I might add as the two talented young drivers showed respect with Becerra taking the win by a car-length over Hill. Daniel Keltner and Vance Wilson were third and fourth while Randy Lamar made the trip down from the Quad Cities to finish fifth.
Points racing continues at 34 Raceway next Saturday night, August 26th, with Season Championship Night on September 2nd. The track will then close out its 2017 season, as mentioned above, with the Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders Championship night on September 23rd.
Next up for me will be the Season Championship at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa this Wednesday. Hope to see you there!
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