Today's notebook entry starts off with a few thoughts from last night's races at 34 Raceway west of Burlington. It was the second night of the inaugural Fall Haul featuring the Sprint Invaders and this night had been postponed from Saturday due to cold temps and inevitable rain that showed up right on schedule. This followed a Friday night where a cool damp night kept the crowd to a minimum so the fiscally responsible thing to do would have been to pull the plug on Saturday and call it a show. That is not what first year promoters Brad Stevens and Jessi Mynatt did though. Instead they pushed the Saturday show to Sunday and even after the rain that fell on Saturday night gave them a second chance to throw in the towel they instead pulled together their staff and volunteers to make it possible to proceed on yet another night that was less than perfect weather wise.
I said it on the microphone last night and I will say it again now. It should have been obvious to all in attendance that this weekend would be well short of a "money maker" for Brad and Jessi, but they pushed ahead in order to give these 360 Sprint Car drivers an opportunity to make some solid cash and hopefully establish a new signature event for the class at the end of the season. While they were not rewarded for their efforts this weekend, hopefully the respect that they earned will pay off many times over in 2019 and beyond.
Not only did 34 Raceway put up a purse that went over $30,000 for the weekend, Matt Rogerson and Nick Eastin with Midland Performance took it upon themselves to gather additional sponsorship through lap money and that grew to others including Jon Agan who also gathered additional money from several gracious supporters. Agan himself collected the bulk of Friday's lap money by outrunning a hard charging Paul Nienheiser to the checkers and on Sunday night Seth Bergman's flag to flag win in the 34-lap headliner not only saw him collect the $3,400 winner's check, but also $1,700 in lap money making it a lucrative weekend for the driver who is currently second in the ASCS National Series points. In victory lane Bergman told this announcer that he had looked at the purse money being posted for this event and with the extra lap money being added he made the decision to attend on this an "off" weekend for the National Tour. Frankly, I was surprised that others did not do the same as Chris Martin was the only other touring driver to attend, and he was the 2016 champion with the Sprint Invaders. Perhaps Bergman's success will catch the attention of others for next year although it was hard to be disappointed with the fields of 28 on Friday and 29 on Saturday.
The weekend also served as the final events for the Sprint Invaders in 2018 and on Sunday night Cody Wehrle also celebrated a series championship on the front stretch after the feature. The young driver and his car owner Andy Huston have done it right starting off in the 305 class for a season or two here at 34, then learning each week with a 360 at Knoxville the past two seasons while all the while getting faster and faster with the Sprint Invaders. A pair of top-five finishes with the series last year showed that he would be ready to contend in 2018 and Cody delivered his first career 360 feature win with the Sprint Invaders here at 34 Raceway on August 18th. The victory would put him in a commanding position when it came to the Series points and he did not have to be aggressive to close out the championship season with an eleventh place finish on Friday and a twelfth on Sunday. One of the most personable drivers that you will find anywhere, it was an honor for me to be able interview The Champ on Sunday night.
For the story and full results I am going to refer you to my colleague Bill Wright and his website OpenWheel01.com with Friday night here and Saturday night here.
Eleven Late Models were in competition on Sunday night as well and when Jay Johnson raced to the early lead you could just tell that he was not going to let this one get away. Even Jay admitted that it had been way too long since he had been in victory lane and you never know, this just might be the night that returns him to form. Nick Marolf, Matt Ryan, Tyler Bruening and Andy Nezworksi completed the top five.
Moving on to other stuff now, the weather also played havoc with some other events that were scheduled for the area this past weekend. The Annual Tradition at the Adams County Speedway in Corning was pushed back to this coming weekend. The Scotland County Speedway in Memphis, Missouri, hosted over 110 cars on Friday night, but then had their Saturday showed wiped out by rain. The Upper Iowa Speedway in Decorah postponed their show from Saturday to October 13th and this was show that earlier in the week the track had posted on Facebook "We need to fill the grandstand this Saturday night for the future success of the Upper Iowa Speedway." The post included a link that is no longer accessible, but either way that does not sound good.
The Farley Speedway Promotions team has been absolutely cursed by the weather this year so it should have been no surprise when their final event of the year, The Rumble on the River in Dubuque was also rained out after being shortened to a single day event on Saturday. The promotional group has been treated like a punching bag for decisions that have been made and while I am not here to defend them I do want to point out that if the weather would have actually cooperated for just one or two of their special events this year, the whole narrative would be completely different. As it stands now I have no idea how they will proceed in 2019.
As of today the weather will again be a challenge this weekend with several special events in the region being threatened. Hopefully the extended forecast is painting a broad picture right now and once we get closer to race time we will see only an hour or two of rain here and there, something that would allow most of these events to be run. I have been given the green light to try to get four shows in and I will be watching the weather closely in about a seven state area to determine if I go north, south, east, west or stick close to home. My Thursday night target is the opening night of the Fall Bash at Tipton and after that I will pick out events in the region least likely to get rain on Friday and Saturday. One of my goals is to get to a track or two that I have not been to before so as of right now a trip to Minnesota to visit the Viking Speedway and the Ogilvie Raceway is the most likely destination with a stop at the Sunday afternoon Oktoberfest show at the LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway to top of the weekend. If the cold air scares me off though there are plenty of good choices down in Missouri this weekend and a trip east into Indiana and Kentucky is not out of the question. Then again I might just stick close to home with another night in Tipton, a trip to Oskaloosa or a return to Corning for my first time in more than twenty years. With all of those my Sunday night stop would then be at the Quincy Raceways for their Halloween Havoc event.
I hope that you too are mapping out your options for the racing weekend ahead and you never know, we might just run into each other somewhere on the Back Stretch.
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