Here we go, another week of watching a weather forecast each day and hoping that it improves so that we can go racing. For me it is the season opener for the Shottenkirk.com Sprint Invaders scheduled for this Saturday night at 34 Raceway near Burlington, but there are a few other special events in the region as well this weekend.
I had to chuckle this morning when an AWP who usually has more of the attitude of Eeyore when it comes to weather leading up to an event posted on a race forum that the forecast for the event that he is hoping to attend this weekend "looks great!" Apparently only a 40% chance of rain with a high of 49 and a twenty mile per hour wind is enough to give him hope for the first race of the year. Hopefully he will have the same attitude when he posts about other events in 2018.
The sad part is that not only will we be lucky to do some racing this weekend, but the long range forecast for the following week when the Frostbusters give us a chance to go racing on Wednesday and Thursday as well as the weekend does not look good either. Please change!
It is not unusual for us to have Spring weather like this and I can recall some years where I was only able to get in a race or two before the month of May rolled around. When this happens you will see the discussion start up as to why promoters even bother to schedule early events in the first place, which I guess is what you sit around and do when you have no races to go to. In my opinion, in this day and age it is even easier for a promoter to take the risk of scheduling an early race event and here's why. Twenty-five or more years ago if you were going to try to have a race on the final Saturday in March you would have had to invest some money in advertising in the regional racing papers like Hawkeye Racing News, Midwest Racing News, Checkered Flag Racing News, Speed Sport, etc. just to let both drivers and fans know about it and since three of those four were not weekly until April that money would have been spent in January or February. Then, if you have snow like we did last weekend and had to cancel in advance, that money was gone, a valid financial loss for trying to schedule a race too early.
Today a promoter can put the early special on his or her website and publicize it on the track's Facebook page without any additional cost. Any track work that goes on leading up to the event is work that you would have already had to do to get ready for the season anyway so as long as the promoter pulls the plug three or four days prior to the event, before that delivery of hot dogs and hamburgers is made for the concessions, then there is no direct cost to having scheduled that early season opener and losing it. Low risk if handled properly. The potential reward on the other hand is quite high if you catch some nice weather and can go ahead with the show, I saw this first hand back on February 24th when a very nice crowd rolled into Volunteer Speedway on a warm sunny day.
So why would any fan argue the point that promoters should stop scheduling early season events? I think that it is just because they don't like being "teased" with the prospect of going racing and then having cool and rainy weather take it away from them. I on the other hand appreciate the opportunity that is given to us by those promoters who do take the risk and I hope that they continue to do so going forward even if the Spring of 2018 does not allow them to achieve the reward.
While the weather has been less than desirable here in southeast Iowa a track that is just a little over a five hour drive away from here in southeast Kansas, the Humboldt Speedway has already held eight complete nights of racing in 2018! It started out with their three-day Battle of the Bullring B-Mod special the first weekend of March. They came back two weeks later with the big USMTS King of America Modified triple header and this past weekend they showcased the Mod Lites with two nights of action. Corey Babbitt from Texas was the winner both nights for the Mod Lites that somewhat surprisingly only pulled in 23 cars as the headliner for the weekend. Quad Cities driver John Padilla finished second and Pleasant Hill's Mike Morrill was fifth on Friday night while in Saturday's finale Padilla was again the runner-up, Randy Bryan from Ames was third, Ed Griggs of Pleasant Hill was fifth and Morrill finished in sixth. The B-Mods were one of the support classes each night where Cody Jolly swept the weekend. Humboldt takes the Easter weekend off before rolling into their regular season on April 6th.
Christopher Bell swept the two-day Turnpike Challenge POWRi Midget show at the I-44 Riverside Speedway near Oklahoma City. With the weekend off from his Xfinity Series ride Bell's sweep now makes him eight for eight in the four years of this event.
Danny Rosencrans and I toyed with the idea of making a road trip to Harrisburg, Arkansas, last Friday night where the Comp Cams Super Late Model Series returned to the Old No. 1 Speedway, but with too much going on at work I had to stay in the office past noon. Looks like it might have been a late night there as Gavin Landers had the throttle stick on his car and he ended up on top of a concrete wall and tangled in a catch fence. The incident happened during heat race action and in the picture that I saw it was already dark. Then in the feature Jon Mitchell had a rollover incident that required evaluation from the paramedics. Robert Baker edged out Billy Moyer and Timothy Culp to take the Late Model feature win. Barry Johnson and I went to a show at the Harrisburg track several years ago and it was quite racy so I am looking forward to a return trip soon.
The Batesville Motor Speedway hosted two nights of racing for their Spring Nationals featuring the IMCA Modifieds and on Friday night it was Hunter Marriott in victory lane with Iowans Jeff James and Kelly Shryock finishing fourth and sixth respectively. Local driver Jeff Taylor was the Saturday night winner with Marriott third, James fifth and Shryock again in sixth.
How about Sheldon Haudenschild? The young driver continued his hot start to 2018 taking his third World of Outlaws victory at the Bakersfield Speedway in California on Saturday night and Rookie-of-the-Year candidate Ian Madsen charged from 16th up to fifth at the checkers.
Last week I mentioned that Craig Dollansky was set to drive Scott Bonar's Midland Performance car #50 in the 410 Sprint Car show at Moberly on Sunday. That event was postponed until April 22nd due to the weather and today "The Crowd Pleaser" announced his retirement from racing on his Facebook page.
A regular reader of the Back Stretch and a true race fan that I have to meet in person soon, David Schlise is organizing a Fan Fund event for the King of the Creek IMCA Stock Car special coming up this summer at the 141 Speedway in Maribel, Wisconsin. To learn more visit the Help Grow the Sport of Racing page on Facebook and while you are there go ahead and join the group. After all, doesn't the title of it represent what we are all hoping to do? And besides, we need to add more Iowans to balance out the Cheeseheads!
With more and more Crate Late Model racing closing in on this part of the country I found this blog by Florida racer Jonathan Joiner quite interesting. Unfortunately it seems like no matter what set of rules that somebody comes up with to try to keep the cost of racing down there will always be those who go beyond the spirit of those rules to give themselves an advantage. It seems like a lifetime ago that Keith Knaack implemented a rule that allowed anybody finishing outside of the top four to Claim a motor for just $300 dollars. I wonder how many of today's drivers and fans realize that it was this crazy concept that was the foundation for the largest division of race cars in the country. Time for someone else to do something crazy......
Here we go again, it is about that time of the year when somebody comes along with another story asking whether or not negative social media has an impact on racing. This one though is a pretty good discussion of the topic between the two writers although I believe that they have already gone down this road before a time or two. To draw people to read it though they have go on to a race forum with a link which then leads to several comments from the usual cast of characters with some making their standard response that obviously shows that they only read the title and not the actual discussion.
As I have said here before, I cringe now whenever somebody tries to make this point because it is like the Russians trying to influence the election. Everybody has already made up their mind on the subject so now this only just stirs the pot once again and causes general discourse among the fan base without ever changing any minds.
For those of you who do not believe that there is a negative effect on the sport from the constant harping on Facebook and forums I suggest that you do this. Pick out a track near you that has closed recently and then do a search of it on both Facebook and the race forums that would have been relevant to it. Then read back through the comments and keep a a scorecard of how many posts were positive compared to negative. Then, for the ones that are negative, tally up the percentage of those that were just offering up "constructive criticism", you know those well intentioned comments that were just meant to help the promoter improve the show. Then, when you are all done, truly put yourself in the promoter's shoes knowing that you had worked your tail off to sell sponsorship, pay a good purse, prepare a good race track and charge a fair admission only to come up with a loss at the end of the night and then read those comments once again.
Perhaps then you will see how "You should go get some more corporate sponsorship" might just piss you off.
Here's hoping that we all get to see some racing soon!
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