The Dome

Made my way to the Dome for the third year in a row Friday night. On track action was scheduled to start at 2 p.m. and after qualifying for the Midgets, heat races for the Late Models and Midgets, last chance races for the Modifieds, Midgets and Late Models and twin twenty lap features for all three divisions, thirty-two races in all, I was on my way home at 12:28 a.m. truly making this #DirtInDecember.

The "caution count" hit 87 this year, fourteen more than last year when we had twice as many Modifieds and no Midgets, but you can't really blame the Midgets for the increase as they ran off their full program with just fifteen cautions. The invitation only field of Modifieds on the other hand racked up twenty-one cautions in their four events, two B-Mains and two twenty lap features.

The Midget racing was very good as this size track is much more suitable for them. It was again fun to see several Late Model drivers that I have only read about before and even a few that I have never even heard of and there was some exciting action here and there throughout the evening. You had to love Shannon Babb's cushion slinging efforts even though it ended up biting him when he slammed the turn two wall while leading the second feature on lap seven. Babb had charged to the front after starting sixth and definitely had the crowd buzzing even though it was now past midnight. Okay, so maybe much of the crowd was probably already more than buzzed after drinking $10 Budweiser products from the vendors, but Shannon was rewarding all of us for investing the past ten hours in this one. Bobby Pierce would assume the lead from there and take the win while Babb restarted at the rear and did get back up to sixth at the checkers.

Another memorable Late Model moment came during the first twenty-lapper when Louisiana's Manny Falcon got turned into the infield coming off of turn turn four, stayed in the gas, drove straight up the track in the middle of turns one and two, pulled off a 180 degree turn and somehow maintained his seventh running position without getting clobbered by several cars who had to scramble to miss him. Falcon who sports the unusual #955 finished seventh as Brandon Sheppard took the win.

The two Midget features were intriguing as they ran on two very different race tracks. The track was very choppy one line up in turns three and four, while the bottom in one and two "had character" for the first twenty lap main event. This created an interesting battle up front as Brady Bacon tried to hold off Christopher Bell with Bell running the opposite line that Bacon had chosen. After a Tim Crawley spin on lap six, Bell made his move on the restart sliding up in front of Bacon to take the lead. Meanwhile, behind them Ricky Stenhouse Jr. was making a thrilling charge after starting in the tenth row using that rough middle line in turns three and four to his advantage. He was all the way up to sixth when it came back to bite him though on lap ten when he hooked a rut that pitched him completely sideways sending the NASCAR Cup driver for a rough tumble in turn four.

On the restart Bacon and Zach Daum made contact in turn one sending Bacon for a spin and it would be Daum who would chase Bell the rest of the way to the checkers. During the extended trophy presentation the track crew went to work using some of the dirt that was constantly being vacuumed up by a street sweeper on the dome floor outside of the track to fill in the holes and the track was much better for Midget feature number two.  This one would be a classic battle between Tanner Courtney and Kyle Larson with just one caution for a Justin Grant spin on lap eight to interrupt the action. Courtney would lead the opening lap, but the third starting Larson would take the point on lap two. Once again the challenger would choose a different groove than the leader to try to mount a challenge and when Larson could see that "Sunshine" was getting a run off the top in turn two he slid up the track on lap twelve to try to block. Courtney made the quick adjustment and dove to the inside of Larson down the back stretch to beat him into turn three and the new leader started to pad his lead from there.

As the white flag waved Courtney appeared to have things well in hand, but when he got a bit too conservative on the tall cushion in turns three and four coming to the checkers Larson made one last big dive to the bottom in turn three and nearly pulled off the big slider in four as Courtney slipped around him and scored the win much to the delight of the huge Friday night crowd.

Both Modified features were won from the pole as Josh Harris and Kenny Wallace took well-paying feature wins and locked themselves into Saturday's finale. Ray Bollinger and Mike McKinney stayed glued to the bottom behind Harris for second and third, while Dean Hoffman came from fourteenth to be the runner-up to Wallace.

When I left here last year I didn't plan on coming back, but adding the midgets was too much to resist and they were definitely a positive addition to the program. Even with the fields limited to only 54 in both the Mods and the Midgets this was just too much racing for one day as there is nothing that you can do about the incidents that the close quarters racing creates. Frankly I thought that track was the most competitive that I have seen it in the three nights that I have attended, but more than ten hours of grandstand seat time is just too much for this old fan. I will see what modifications will be made, if any, for 2019 before making my decision on a return trip.

In the meantime, don't forget that you can watch all of the action from tonight's finale at Dirt On Dirt with on track action getting underway at 3 p.m. and features scheduled for seven o'clock.