There is enough going on of interest this week to warrant a second Notebook entry here on the Back Stretch.
So for those of you who are regular readers you know that I have used the term "net zero" when it comes to the gains and losses of race tracks. Every time news come of a track that is closing down it seems like a lot of people want to use that to whine about how the sport is dying and that someday soon we won't have any tracks left to go to. That narrative is always put out there despite the fact that there are often announcements of new tracks, or more likely the reopening of an old track that usually keeps us at around "net zero".
One of those reopening announcements came this week when the I-90 Speedway in Hartford, South Dakota, detailed its plans to return to racing after taking few years off racing weekly on Saturday nights from May into September. Lyle and Dawn Howey still own the facility and you will recall that it was shut down when Howey was hired to do the track prep at Badlands Motor Speedway. "Hot Rod" Pattison will serve as the General Manager for 2019 and he already has shown that he can get the job done after having success at the Wagner Speedway in South Dakota.
It was also good to see this week that racing will continue at the Upper Iowa Speedway in Decorah next year with Wayne Smith taking over as the new owner and promoter. Smith owns and operates the South Side Bar & Grill in Cresco and he will keep the previous promoters, Todd and Chuck Ihde, close by for 2019 as they will continue to do track prep likely showing Smith and his crew how to do it in the future. Smith plans little change in the racing at UIS continuing to run USRA sanctioned events on Saturday nights.
Matt Curl, the new owner/promoter at the Fairbury American Legion Speedway made a big splash on Thursday with the announcement that he is significantly increasing the purse for his weekly Saturday night shows in 2019. The UMP Late Models will now pay $2,500 to win, $1,300 for second and $1,000 for third with $300 just to start in the twenty car main event, while the UMP Modified feature winner will now pick up $1,000 at the pay window and it will pay $175 just to start. The total feature purse for the five division program that also includes Sportsman, Street Stocks and Hobby Mods is over $22,000 and there in no increase in admission with the grandstand ticket at $10 and a $25 pit pass. Is this sustainable? I guess that we will find out!
On a side note I found it interesting in how Fairbury has the purse structured for the Hobby Mod division. It pays $60-to-win, $60 for second, $60 for fifth, $60 for thirteenth, okay so it pays every feature starter from first to last $60. If you are a promoter at a track that is struggling to build a car count in your budget division, such as the Four Cylinder/Sport Compacts, maybe you should try this concept and see what happens.
The Dunn Benson Motorsports Team that had Bobby Pierce behind the wheel in 2018 will go with another high profile second generation driver in 2019 with the announcement of Devin Moran as their new chauffeur. Moran had a solid 2018 season with the World of Outlaws, but with the move to Dunn Benson he will now be a Lucas Oil series contender as the team has traditionally had support from Lucas.
The 2019 UMP Summer Nationals "Hell Tour" schedule was released with no real surprises on it. In fact at first glance one would have thought that they just copied and pasted last year's sequence and then changed the dates to fit the new year. The series will open again at the Peoria Speedway on June 12 and conclude with two shows at the Oakshade Speedway in northwest Ohio. It was interesting to the Paducah International Raceway on the schedule again as that track closed up early last year. The World of Outlaws will pair up with the Hell Tour again at Terre Haute and I-55 while the Quincy Raceways' date on July 7th might be the only one that I make it to due to a wedding in New Jersey and a promise that I made to myself and that I intend to keep.
One of the most valuable things that a dirt track can have is a local newspaper that provides good, positive coverage of each and every event at the track. And to have that you must have somebody at that local paper who is willing to invest the time that it takes to visit the track on a regular basis and actually become a fan. 34 Raceway has that in Matt Levins, a sportswriter at the Burlington Hawk Eye as well as John Bohnenkamp the sports editor. Here is a link to Matt's story that appeared in today's edition of The Hawk Eye, and keep in mind that this is in December, still 113 days from opening night!
As a sometimes announcer at 34, I try to always make a point of mentioning the coverage that The Hawk Eye provides and thanking both John and Matt whether they are there that night or not because all it takes is for one person to tell them in passing in the following week that 34 Raceway was thanking them for their coverage in order to keep it coming. Sadly, most "stick and ball" writers only visit the race track when something bad happens. If you are getting positive coverage from your local media, make sure that you let them know how much you appreciate it and by all means make it easy on them! Don't make them have to go looking for your race results on MyRacePass, Facebook or your website, send them to them via email as soon as possible after your event.
The United States Modified Touring Series (USMTS) schedule for 2019 has been released and series owner Todd Staley announced yesterday at the PRI show that any driver who has perfect attendance will receive $10,000 at the banquet. Now of course this is in addition to nightly purses and the likely point fund money that a driver would earn by racing in each and every event so with around 50 events on the schedule you could look at that bonus essentially as being $200 in tow money each night, something that only the top drivers in other touring series are guaranteed. Checking the schedule a couple of dates jump out at me with the first being on March 15th at the Kennedale Speedway Park in Texas. Sounds like a perfect opportunity to visit my grandson and catch a race, or perhaps take my grandson to his first race if the weather is nice! Closer to home the series will return to the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa on Wednesday, July 17th. I also notice that the Longdale Speedway in Oklahoma, a track that sat idle in 2018, is back on the schedule for a race in late April and the facility has booked a two day show for the MLRA Late Models in July. So there is another example of the "net zero" theory.
It dawned on me this morning that since I started writing the Back Stretch for Hawkeye Racing News back in 1979 that this would be the conclusion of my 40th continuous year of sharing my thoughts and enthusiasm for the sport that I love. The past ten of those have been online with this blog page as part of our home website Positively Racing and a check of the stats shows that I have had over a half a million page views in that time period. My goal is to someday surpass two million and with your help, by sharing the columns that you find interesting with your friends, I might just be able to do that before I reach the age of 75. And, if you think that I am a crotchety old man now, just wait until then.
I know that I usually release the updated Cumulative All Iowa Points on a division by division basis over the Holidays, but since I have them done and ready to load look for them to start hitting the Back Stretch next week.
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