I knew that it had been several years since I had made the trip to Boone for at least one night of the IMCA Super Nationals, but when I went back to the archives of the Back Stretch to find that my last visit here was in 2009 I was surprised that it had been that long! With my son Morgan now living and working in Des Moines it was his wish to get his first experience of this mega event that brought me back on Thursday and with all of the rain over the first three days it gave me an opportunity to get the absolute most out of my return.
With the Wednesday Modified program pushed to an 8 a.m. start on Thursday I set my alarm for 4:40 in the morning and was soon on the road leaving Mt. Pleasant in a steady rain that took me nearly half the trip to drive out of. The roads were dry when I reached Boone, but that was the only thing that was dry and as I walked around the outside of the pit area and through the grounds to get to the ticket office I was amazed by the sheer mess of it all. Mud was everywhere, but somehow the haulers for more than 400 race cars had found some place to park in the muck in preparation for a full day of action. How this place managed to get any racing in on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is simply remarkable and it became very obvious to me that anybody who had been lobbing potshots on social media on how things were being handled each time Mother Nature threw a curve ball had obviously not been here in person.
It was odd to be watching hot laps at eight in the morning, something that I had never done before, the closest being when we used to go to the Saturday morning race at the Iowa State Fair where the hot laps may have started that early, but we never made it until race time at 10 a.m. after a full night at Knoxville the night before. Actually the drive up reminded me of a trip that I made back in my late teens when the NSCA ran a day night doubleheader at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in Sedalia where we left home in the dark, but on that early April day there were snow flurries in the air rather than rain. I am getting off topic......
Catching the morning show allowed me to see all 229 Modifieds in action and the time passed quickly chatting with friends Dick and Joyce Eisele and David Schlise, plus it was nice to catch a few minutes here and there with Ryan Clark who along with Jerry Van Sickel somehow announce the entire week without losing their voices, or at least they haven't done so yet. And by the way, make sure that you listen closely to these two and try to catch some of the humor that they slip in with all of the other information. Denny and Toby were legendary, these two are there as well.
The Boone Speedway crew has the track prep down to a science, even with the extra added moisture this week, and "farming sessions" are scheduled as part of the program to provide the best racing possible. They may have learned something though for the future when the schedule gets altered and requires a day race as before each of the day's two 25-lap qualifying features there were three 8-lap B-Mains run right after track prep. The track was nice and wide for those three B's and for the early laps of each A-Main only to then see the groove lock down to the bottom under the intermittent mid-day sun. So perhaps in the future, if ever in this situation again, only one or at the most two B-Mains will be contested between farming and the feature.
The first A-Main saw northern Iowa's Ryan Ruter drive by Californian Ethan Dotson on lap eight and then survive a series of four cautions to take the win. Wisconsin's Josh Long was one driver who found some success off the bottom late in the race to get to second at the checkers, Doston finished third and another Californian Cody Laney made his way up from a fourteenth row start to take the fourth and final transfer to Saturday's "big dance".
Kansas driver Clay Money was in the top four through the first sixteen laps only to get shuffled back a few positions on a Delaware double-file restart before coming back to finish fifth. Tom Berry Jr. who raced in Iowa last year while giving a home address of Medford, Oregon, and who is now racing in North Dakota this year was running solidly in fourth when another Oregon driver Collen Winebarger tried to squeeze under him on lap eight. Contact sent Winebarger for a spin pushing him back in the thirty car field. Berry didn't have the same luck late in the race when contact from Randy Foote turned both of them sideways leaving Michigan hot shoe A.J. Ward with no place to go taking all three of them out of contention for a top four finish.
Texan Kevin Sustaire struggled in the early laps of the second feature first spinning from his tenth starting spot as the field came through turns three and four to the green and then again getting sideways in turn four on lap two. This time both Richie and Jimmy Gustin had no place to go with Jimmy getting the black flag for not coming to a complete stop once inside the poles in the infield before returning to the track, a rule that is in place to keep the infield personnel safe. Jay Noteboom would lead the opening lap before yielding to Jeff Aikey and the track really locked down in this one with the only passing up front happening when Noteboom left the inside line open exiting turn four allowing Riley Simmons to get under him. There was plenty of contact as the two tried to get to the low line in turn one first, but both kept their head and kept their cars straight as Simmons would be the runner-up to Aikey's win with Noteboom in third.
The race for that fourth and final transfer was wild on the final lap as Mitchell Hunt, Troy Cordes and Troy Foulger went three-wide into turn one all looking for that low line. Somehow they kept from wrecking and it be Hunt who would prevail as the Michigan driver punched his ticket to the big show.
The morning session wrapped up at 2:05 so after the ten minute hike to my car I drove to Ames to get a late lunch before going to Des Moines to pick up Morgan. We returned to the track just past 5:30 in time to catch the last four of the twenty Stock Car heat races and it was good to see that Paul Vetter was able to join us once again. I have to mention Paul and David, because along with you, they make up my five or six regular visitors to the Back Stretch and I thank you all for taking the time to read this stuff!
With both Morgan and I having to be at work again on Friday morning we had agreed to go back to my old way of sampling the Super Nationals setting a 10:30 curfew to give Morgan a five hour "spoonful" of action. He is a veteran fan of the Knoxville Sprint Car Nationals and as we again walked around the jam-packed pit area and the mud covered grounds he made the comment "this is incredible" a couple of times.
The timing of the track prep during the regularly scheduled action was perfect and the wide, high-banked quarter-mile served up plenty of action as drivers raced hard for each and every position trying to make their way into Saturday's main events. The two Stock Car qualifying features would fall within our five hours of attendance and both 25-lap events transferring four cars to Saturday would be won in flag-to-flag fashion. Nebraska's Kyle Vanover would go the distance in the first one not once getting even a good challenge for the lead despite several restarts. The action was intense behind him though as drivers scrambled for position. Jeff Tubbs from Colby, Kansas, would make his way to second after starting twelfth and when Chad Clancy clipped Scott Davis while racing for third with four laps remaining that would open the door for Jeff Mueller and Jason See to finish the race in third and fourth after starting fifteenth and sixteenth respectively. It was an impressive run for Mueller who did it despite the fact that he had some damage on the right front suffered in an early race scuffle. Burlington, Iowa's, Chad Krogmeier was impressive in fifth and will have two more opportunities to race his way into the big show for the first time.
With the West Liberty Raceway sitting idle in 2018, Johnny Spaw made the pull over to Boone from Cedar Rapids on Saturday nights this year where he finished second in the Stock Car point standings. That weekly experience really showed in this night's second feature as Spaw went unchallenged in winning the 25-lap event. Luke Lemmens slipped by Hunter Marriott late to take the second spot and long after finishing the race in the third position it was announced that Marriott had been disqualified for a non-working rev limiter. This would move Brian Rigsby up to third and would lock Wisconsin Stock Car veteran Jeremy Christians into fourth.
The final ten Modified heats would follow another farming session and we "broke" our curfew by just five minutes to see that last heat race take the checkers before we headed for home completely satisfied with a full five hours of watching some great racing along with friends. On the way home Morgan said that as long as he is in Des Moines, he would like for us to continue to make it to at least one night of the Super Nationals. And this is coming from a Sprint Car snob!
One not so positive comment that I do have though is that I really do NOT like Jerry's motto of "On your feet until you see green" as apparently short people and children are not allowed to watch the start of a feature race. My preference has always been to remind race fans after the parade lap that when everybody sits, everybody sees. After all this is dirt track racing, not NASCAR, we don't have to stand just to make it look more exciting. Even World of Outlaws Sprint Car announcer Johnny Gibson has finally come on board with this in 2018 and from this thread on Hoseheads it is very much appreciated.
It looks like the weather should cooperate the rest of the way for this year's Super Nationals, something that everybody involved truly deserves!
Speaking of NASCAR the announcement that the Championship team from 2017 will now close its doors at the conclusion of 2018 has sent shock waves through the sport. Michael Waltrip who closed up his own team a few years back noted that they need to put the word "Stock" back into the world of Stock Car racing and in a video Kenny Wallace said that we need to "dumb it down" again, referring to the costs of being competitive. If they want to see proof of how this might work on a much smaller scale, the head honchos at NASCAR need look no further than the success of the Cash Money Dirt Late Model Series based in southwest Missouri. With a rules package meant to take Late Models back to how they handled some twenty years ago, the series debut had 17 cars at the Tri-State Speedway in Oklahoma on March 30th and the last two events, both held at the Springfield Raceway, have drawn counts of 28 and 35 racing for just $1,000-to-win.
Taking a bunch of money out of both the front end, and the back end so that fans don't have to have a second mortgage to attend a NASCAR race would help and it will probably improve the actual racing as well. That would be a huge step to take though, and one that a corporate giant who still remembers its meteoric rise will not likely accept.
Rain has forced some changes to the schedules for some other events this weekend headlined by the World 100 at the Eldora Speedway. With remnants of tropical storm Gordon set to drift over the area the next two days the most prestigious event in dirt Late Model racing will now be completed on October 12th and 13th. After a rain delay they did get in last night's opener with Scott Bloomquist and Jimmy Owens winning qualifying night features over a field of 101 entries. Brian Birkhofer drove the Jason Rauen owned car #30 to a second-place finish behind Owens so it is safe to say that the rust has been shaken off and the combo will be threat to win at next week's Knoxville Late Model Nationals.
As if this season hasn't already been challenging enough for the Farley Speedway Promotions team, of which Rauen is a part of, the rescheduled World 100 now plops right down on their rescheduled date for the Farley Super Modified weekend where both Scott Bloomquist and Tim McCreadie were original entries.
Other changes in the schedule from this weekend includes the Tom Knowles Memorial at the Spoon River Speedway in Canton being postponed to next Saturday September 15th. The Michael Petersen Memorial at the Eldon Raceway has been moved to September 22nd and tonight's Cheater Night races at Davenport will now be held on September 29th.
After eleven hours of racing on Thursday I am going to take the next two nights off before making the road trip out to Eagle Raceway on Sunday where the SLMR Late Models will be in action along with IMCA Sprints and the WAR non-wing Sprint Cars. That is a combination that I cannot resist, perhaps I will see you there!
Thanks for visiting the Back Stretch!
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