The One That I Missed!

Late last week in How Brave Are You? I gave you those tracks that at the time were still going to try to hold their races despite the terrible weather forecast for the weekend. Eventually all of those tracks canceled making it look like a clean sweep for Mother Nature in the states that we track with our Specials schedule at Positively Racing. Turns out though that I missed a track as the Diamond Park Speedway in Nashville, Arkansas, did go ahead and race on Saturday. Or at least I think they did as there have been no results and no follow up comments to their last post on Facebook stating "Come on to DPS we are racing."

In my defense though DPS is one of those tracks that I have been unable to get a Schedule or Results from despite the fact that they have a Facebook page and a website. The home page of the track website tells you that the 2018 Racing Season begins on March 24th and asks you to "please share", but when I click on the Schedule link I see nothing. Please let me know if you see something different! And I get the same look on the Results page as well. Yes, I can see the victory lane photos from March 24th on the Facebook page, but there are no names given and I can click on a Smugmug link that will give me all kinds of race night pictures. Apparently though nobody can take the time to make a post that that actually gives the results.

In this day and age there is no excuse for running "Secret Races".

I still haven't been able to find the results from opening night March 31st at the Peoria Speedway either. Once again I can see feature winner pictures as well as a Smugmug link to 126 pictures from the night on Facebook, but no results. When I asked about it through a Facebook message the response was that the Results could be found on their website. Yes, they do have a Results tab on the track website, but as of this writing if you click it you will be taken to the track's Speed Net Direct page with results from September 30th of last season.

I am guessing that they just don't realize that Speed Net, a service that I believe to be on its way out, is just not up to date because if you go directly to Speed Net Direct and look at their "Most Recent Results" you will find that they come from March 17th at the Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina. That little exercise did reveal a tidbit of information that you might be interested in as the winner of the 19 car Limited Late Model feature that night was Pat Rachels. Pat is a second generation driver, the son of Terry Rachels and Mary Drake, and he went to high school in Knoxville, Iowa. Pat did a little dirt track racing around here, but with an education at Clemson University he now pounds the pavement in the southeast with a little bit of help with some friends from back home as you can see from this picture that I blatantly stole from his Facebook page.

Anyway, here's hoping that Peoria gets things straightened out with Speed Net, or moves to someone else so that we can see the results from the quick little quarter mile during the 2018 season.

On Sunday afternoon I went to the Memorial gathering for Conrad Olson who passed away on March 17th at the age of 80. One of the owners of the Olson Brothers Custom Shop, Conrad and his family were a fixture for many, many years at 34 Raceway in Burlington and the love and respect for him and his family showed as a large crowd gathered to pay their respects. It was a like a family reunion for the 34 Raceway family, old and new with one former driver telling me "I'll bet that 90% of the people in here owe him money because he never charged you what he should have for all that he did." Another veteran driver looked around the crowded room and said, "this is incredible. I sure hope that when I go that this many people remember me in this way." Rest in Peace Conrad,

We have snow on the ground here in southeast Iowa on this Monday morning, but with a temperature that is to push above 50 on Tuesday and jump to near 70 on Wednesday the opener of the IMCA Frostbusters at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson is on as scheduled. The practice night along with the King of the Hill races for Tuesday may be a bit iffy though, but keep an eye on the track's Facebook page where they do a great job of keeping you updated on what's happening.

My plan is to bust out of this late winter with three nights of racing this week, Wednesday night at Donnellson and Thursday night in Vinton for the Frostbusters and then Friday night in Davenport with the Rebel 5K opener for the Deery Brothers Summer Series. Hope to see you on the Back Stretch!