It is rare to schedule a race primarily due to a favorable weather forecast and in fact the only one that I can recall prior to this weekend came back in the Fall of 2020. With the ten day forecast calling for temps in the 70's during the first weekend of November, the Darkside Promotions duo paired up with promoter Ricky Kay to schedule "Dirt In November" on Friday November 6th at the Davenport Speedway. Paired with the previously scheduled Turkey Dash at the CJ Raceway the next day, the hastily organized event drew in 121 cars in five classes and while I was unable to attend due to a prior commitment, I was told that there was a solid crowd on hand. And yes, the Turkey Dash the following day went quite well!
Scheduling an event at the end of the season, and essentially pairing it up with another track close by was not as big of a risk as the promoters at the Park Jefferson Speedway took this Saturday. Coming out of the warmest February on record (actually in the Quad Cities it finished in a dead heat with the February of 1882 at 39.5 degrees) and a favorable ten day forecast at the time, the Spring Kickoff Classic was first announced on February 20th and scheduled for a 1 p.m. start on Saturday March 2nd.
It has been since 2001 that I was last at a race at Park Jefferson and despite it being a five hour drive, the early afternoon start made it where I could go up and back on the same day, so of course I had to go and support this very unique event! And things got even better when two of my Positively Racing colleagues, Barry Johnson and Danny Rosencrans decided to ride along as well to get their first ever look at the track that sits just across the state line from Sioux City.
 |
| Barry Johnson photo |
We arrived at 12:05 hoping to secure a spot in the vast clubhouse that overlooks turn one and we fortunately found three of the last stools available as obviously many others shared our goal of staying out of the stiff wind. Hot laps began shortly after 12:30 and once the Hobby Stocks realized that they were the first set of heat races to be run after the anthem, racing got underway at 1:28 in the afternoon. With the "one and done" rule in effect the heat races clicked off in fine fashion with action that was better than expected for a dirt track day race on a sunny and windy afternoon.
The Hobby Stocks were first up come feature time and as they were given some hot laps to run in the reworked surface Tyler Smith, who was scheduled to start fifth, went too high exiting turn four and as he tried to make the save his right side tires dug into the now tacky surface and he rolled over once thus ending his day and extending that time difference between the final qualifying race and the start of the features.
Bo Lundquist and Carter Davis would bring the field to green for fourteen laps with Lundquist getting the early advantage until the caution waved for Nate Fontenot's spin in turn three on lap four. During the caution Lundquist had his left rear tire go flat and he would rejoin the field at the rear with Davis leading the way back to green. A pair of multi-car scrambles slowed the pace on laps seven and ten and on that second restart they would go four-wide for fourth down the back stretch and when entering turn three the two cars in the middle made contact sending both Lowell Janssen and Drew Barglof for a spin. Barglof would take the penalty as Janssen would be given his spot back for the restart and he would be the third driver that would chase Carter Davis home to the checkers.
It would be the first career Hobby Stock victory for Davis whose previous best finish was a third back in 2022. Mankato, Minnesota, visitor Corey Black would finish second ahead of Matt Rezac and Janssen while Dillon Richards filled out the top five.
The Sport Mods would be up next for sixteen laps with Willy Kirk taking the point from the outside of row one. Third starting Brayton Carter would quickly move to second and was putting the pressure on the leader when the caution waved on lap nine when Rusty Montagne drove over the top of turn three.
On the restart John Rebstock would take second back from Carter and while those two battled it out for the runner-up spot, Kirk would pull away to earn a familiar place to him here in victory lane at Park Jeff. Rebstock held off Carter for second, Minnesota's Kaden Woodie was fourth with John Klynsma taking fifth.
As the Sport Mod feature drew to a close it was becoming obvious that the track was starting to lock down on the bottom so when Daniel Eckblad took the lead from the pole position it seemed likely that he would cruise to the Stock Car victory. Levi Feltman had other ideas though as he worked a line one car width higher than the rest of the field and steadily made his way up from fifteenth to challenge for the lead with eight laps remaining.
Eckblad felt the pressure to his outside and both cars drove up the track in turns one and two on the fourteenth circuit nearly opening the door for Jason Fisher to steal the lead. But Eckblad was able to get back to the bottom before entering turn three to block Fisher, but Feltman's slightly higher line was too good and he would take the lead exiting turn four.
Mark Krieger would spin right in front of the leaders in turn two with two laps remaining setting up one final restart, and Feltman was too stout for the other to mount a challenge as he completed the drive of the day to secure the victory. Eckblad and Fisher made it an all Minnesota podium with Nebraska's Nate Desive taking fourth. Dan Mackenthun, who was on his way home from a wet Clash on the Coast in Florida made his stop on the way home payoff with a fifth-place finish.
Twenty laps for the Modifieds would be up next and when two cars at the back of the field spun in turn one, the caution would wave well before the opening lap would be scored. The field would then circle the track several times as officials tried to get Cole Bents back up to the outside of row one, but he seemed content to be restarting from inside of row three as he swerved back and fourth to put heat into his tires. Finally they just moved the outside row forward putting Cody Thompson next to pole-sitter Jerry King and when they slipped high exiting turn two on the first lap, Jeremy Mills said "thank you very much" as he raced to the lead down the back stretch after starting third.
Caution would wave for an incident involving Jim Cole and Sam Hoffman on lap five and again on lap eleven when Justin Zeitner slowed to a halt on the front stretch. With each restart Mills would pull away from Thompson and while I believe the announcer meant to say that he was "stretching his legs", it came out much differently and when he used the same term later during the Sprint Car feature I could only hope that he was careful about which drivers he was saying that about.
As the laps clicked off Thompson was able to get to the back bumper of the leader, but with Jeremy not making any mistakes he would take the convincing win over Cody. Troy Cordes drove a nice race picking his spots to go from ninth to third, Shane DeMey finished fourth while Bents stayed where he had dropped himself to in fifth.
With a long drive ahead of us we has set a five o'clock curfew, but we decided to stick around to see how the Sprint Car main event would play out and it was pretty much like we had expected. The high sun, the warming temps and the stiff wind finally had made the track more like rubbered up pavement and passing would be at a premium over the twenty laps. Brandon Bosma would spin out of the third position with seven laps remaining and now it would be a test of who had saved their right rear tire the best behind race-long leader Andrew Sullivan.
A top five run would end for John Lambertz with a flat tire and Trevor Serbus would have his tire blow while running fourth with six laps remaining. Then two laps later the right rear would let go on the second place car of Coby Werkmeister. A caution would wave for debris with two laps remaining and the question now would be who could coax their tire to the checkers and Sullivan did just that to take the win over Dusty Ballenger, Trefer Waller, Lee Goos Jr. and Stuart Snyder. However, as I close out this story later in the day on Sunday I now see that Sullivan has been disqualified with no mention on Facebook as to why. So give the win to Ballenger and move everybody up one spot now landing Dillon Bickett in fifth.
We hustled out as quickly as we could to try to make up some of that post-curfew time and I still made it home right around midnight completeing a long, but enjoyable day of racing. Kaytee DeVries would close out the evening by winning the Sport Compact feature over Tyler Thompson, Kaylee Richards, Johnny Thomas and Kaden Murray.
The track's Facebook page thanked everybody who came out for this quickly scheduled event stating that it was a record attendance under this ownership group with more than 1,200 in the stands and 650 people in the pits. So now the question is, with the success of this event, do you just wait to see if the opportunity presents itself again in the future to schedule an early season event ten days in advance? Or do you just go ahead and schedule the Spring Kickoff Classic on the first Saturday of March for 2025?
What would it hurt to do that? In the old days a promoter would have had to spend money on a display ad in Hawkeye Racing News well in advance to get the word out, but in this day and age you can keep drivers and fans updated for free on social media. Have the race on the schedule and then ten days in advance you assess the situation and decide to have it, postpone it, or just cancel the event all together.
A perfect example is the event that is now billed as the "Nippy 50" scheduled for the final weekend in March at Maquoketa. This used to be the Thaw Brawl that was listed for that same weekend at Donnellson in 2020 and then at Davenport in 2021, 2022 and 2023. Due to the weather conditions either leading up to, or on the scheduled weekend, that race has not been contested for the past four seasons, but you can bet that drivers and fans alike currently have it marked on their calendar to attend or to compete at if it is able to be run this year.
If I was the promoter at Park Jefferson I would announce this week that the 2nd running of the Spring Kickoff Classic is now scheduled for March 1st in 2025. And most, if not all of us 1,850 race fans that were there yesterday would mark it on their calendar!
I noted above that February of 2024 tied the record set in 1882 as the warmest for the month in the Quad Cities, while in Des Moines this February broke the previous record established in 2017. The Quad Cities meteorologist noted that typically following a warm February we experience colder and wetter than normal weather in March and April so I checked back on some archives and was happy to see that we were able to see events at Beatrice and at Memphis in March as well as some early April action at 34 Raceway and Davenport in 2017, but you can see that the theme in each story was overcoming cold and wet conditions. Hopefully that trend will not prevail in 2024 as our next targeted event is the Saturday night edition of the Memphis Spring Nationals on March 23rd.
B.S. Notes - There were nine former All Iowa Points champions in action at Park Jefferson. Jay Noteboom (Modified 2005), Jeremy Mills (Modified 2009), Cody Thompson (Limited Modified 2018), Brayton Carter (Limited Modified 2020 & 2023), Derek Green (Stock Car 2023), Lee Goos Jr. (305 Sprints (2022 & 2023), Dusty Ballenger (360 Sprints 2003 & 305 Sprints 2020), Stuart Snyder (305 Sprints 2021) and Dustin Gulbrandson (Hobby Stocks 2020)......I am getting tired of getting Facebook notifications saying that some track that I follow has mentioned me and others in a comment by using @followers or @Everyone. I already follow your track so that I can see your posts/updates in my news feed, so keep it up and I will solve the annoyance by no longer following your page......Is this what a grumpy old man looks like? See you soon at the track!
No comments:
Post a Comment