A couple of quick thoughts on this beautiful Wednesday where my readers in Iowa should be thinking about attending the races tonight at either the Stuart Speedway or the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. If I didn't have another obligation you can bet that I would be at one of those tracks tonight, especially given the stormy forecast for the weekend ahead!
I was watching the High Limit Sprint Cars on FloRacing last night and it was great to see a standing room only crowd at the Riverside International Speedway in West Memphis, Arkansas. Affectionately known as "The Ditch" the track seems to have a mixture of the "new" and the "old". Drone shots showed what looked like some very nice high rise bleachers that were completely full of race fans, I will count those as the "new", while the track's catch fencing seemed to be rather primitive as proven by a section of it being rolled up and landing on the track with Tim Crawley's flip and the fact that it offered up little, if any resistance when Brian Bell left the ballpark. I guess the good thing about the fencing though was that it was quickly repaired by just rolling out some more and fastening it to the existing structures.
During the repair process I couldn't help to think that Kasey Kahne was looking at it as if to wonder what, if anything that fence would be able to hold in.
As usual when I try to watch live dirt racing on TV, I fell asleep shortly after the restart and woke up just in time for Corey Day to celebrate in victory lane. But before that something really caught my attention. During that red flag period it was announced that all restarts for the rest of the night would be single file and that was met by a pretty generous chorus of boos from the patient crowd. Usually the High Limit Series has complete double file restarts during the feature race using the "choose cone", or whatever the current sponsor of it has it dubbed, where just before the restart the drivers approach the cone single file and then "choose" which line they will restart in by driving below it or above it. This was one of "new" features that the series introduced last season, however it has been a method that has been used on the paved short tracks for many years now.
Often on the paved tracks, the favored line will distinctly be the bottom so you will often see both the leader and the second place driver choose the inside for the restart. The third place driver then has to make a quick decision to either stay low and start behind the top two cars, or move to the outside and start next to the leader knowing that he or she may have a hard time getting back into the favored groove before losing positions beyond third. It adds a whole new level of intrigue to restarts, and keeps the field bunched together for more action, which is the reason why most tracks and organizations choose to have double-file restarts, right?
So why did the High Limit officials make this call to abandon the choose cone at Riverside? It didn't look like the track had locked down so early in the feature and, even if it had, isn't that the reason why you have the "choose cone" in the first place? Perhaps after a pair of fence ripping crashes in the first couple of laps they felt like it was unsafe to put cars two wide for a restart? If that is the case, that doesn't bode well for a return to "The Ditch" despite what looked like a huge success from a promotional standpoint.
The second item that caught my eye today was on Facebook where the Spoon River Speedway was promoting its season opener for this coming Friday night with a photo showing the purse structure for each of the five divisions. For those of you who do not know this yet, the track that is south of Canton, Illinois, has a new promoter for 2024 and he has posted some mind blowing payoffs for a weekly show: $2,000-to-win and $250-to-start for Super Late Models, $1,500-to-win and $150-to-start for UMP Modifieds, $1,000-to-win and $100-to-start for Crate Late Models, $600-to-win and $125-to-start for E-Mods and $300-to-win and $75-to-start for Hornets. With a full field of 20 cars in each class the total payout will be $29,750 which is unheard of for a weekly purse unless you are at Knoxville and if I didn't have my Class of '81 Golf Trip this week, I would be there this Friday. Instead I will try to make the trip next week on May 3rd to check it out.
Anyway, in the comments, a Crate Late Model racer stated, "We will be there if we can run both Late Model classes with our Pro Late Model". Sorry, but that just struck me as a bit demanding and presumptuous. Yes, I have seen tracks where the car count in the Super Late Models are so small that they go ahead and allow the Crate cars to race with them. In fact, there is a track in Texas that has been doing that every Saturday night so far in 2024. Perhaps that is where this driver came up with that notion, but with that purse does he really think that the car count will be short in the Supers? Staying with his same way of thinking, shouldn't the E-Mods demand to be allowed to use their same car and race with the UMP Modifieds. Why shouldn't they get to collect two purse checks after only paying for one pit pass as well?
Ah, you have to love social media where some really smart people can say some really dumb stuff.
That's all for today, I do hope that I can get a race in this Sunday night on my way home from our golf weekend. I am aiming for either the MARS Late Model race at the East Moline Speedway or the season opener at the Adams County IL Speedway in Quincy. Perhaps I will see you there!
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