My original plans went by the wayside yesterday with another commitment, so it would be one night only to attend the Yankee Dirt Classic at the 300 Raceway in Farley, and oh what a night it was as 97 Stock Car drivers did battle in an attempt to qualify for Friday's $100,047-to-win Stock Car Rampage presented by XR. I love the facility, I love the division, I love the format and the track prep was phenomenal providing multi-grooved racing throughout the night with just some additional packing during the five minute breaks between the "alphabet soup" features. The show could not have been run off any faster than what it was and that is a good thing as a long line of heavy thunderstorms were on the march with the lightning to the west highlighting the thirty-lap main event.
Usually you wouldn't find me writing about the F Feature, but that is where the story of the night would start as Minnesota's Curt Lund would start from the pole and lead the distance to take the win to advance to the E-Main. No big deal, right? With a couple of scratches ahead of him, Lund would then line up twelfth needing to just make the top ten to advance once again, but with every car that he could pass here, that would be one less that he would have to get by in the next race so he stormed to the front of this one as well to take the victory.
That now takes him to the D-Main where he starts thirteenth and despite a motor that is now cooking at 250 degrees, Lund again makes a big run and finishes second to California visitor Troy Foulger. So the win streak stops at two, but again he moves up to now the C-Feature where he would start from sixteenth against increasingly tougher competition. And keep in mind, he is only getting a five minute break between races and this time he would get the entire five minutes since he didn't have to be interviewed by the pit reporter.
Let's also take this moment to tell you about the format being used for this mega event. All 190+ drivers hot lapped and then qualified in groups on Tuesday night, each earning points for where they placed within their groups. Then the field was split in two with half of the drivers racing on Wednesday night and the other half on Thursday. Heat races were lined up with a six car invert from qualifying with points being awarded for both the finishing position and the number of cars passed to determine which of the features they would then line up in on the qualifying night. The top twenty would lock into the A-Main with the next fourteen in the B, the following fourteen in the C, the following fourteen in the D and so on. Then to me what is brilliant is the fact that ten cars transfer from each race in the alphabet to the next giving a driver the legitimate chance of making a "run through the soup" as they like to say. One of my favorites, Abe Huls, did it on Wednesday night coming all the way from the E-Main to make the A-Main where he would finish 22nd.
Abe's soup run wasn't quite as flashy though finishing second in the E, tenth in the D, sixth in the C and ninth in the B, but it shows you how this format gives a driver the opportunity to recover from a poor qualifying lap, bad luck in the heat race or a combination of both. All of the "soup" races are fifteen laps until the B-Main which is twenty times around, again giving drivers starting deep in the lineup an opportunity to race their way forward.
Love the format!
Back to Curt Lund who is now lining up sixteenth in the C-Main and once again the veteran driver, who actually raced with us on the NKF Tour for the Modifieda a time or two at the turn of the century, was using every inch of the race track to make his way to the front. On a couple laps, when everybody else went to the bottom in turns one and two, Curt would nail the cushion and sail around three or four cars at a time. But he would really give the crowd a thrill when he would throw a big slide job at a competitor in turns three and four, always doing it in a sportsmanlike manner with plenty of clearance.
That crowd was buzzing when Lund took the lead from Mike Mullen in the final laps to win his third "feature" of the night and once again during his brief interview he said that the driver would be up to the challenge of running the B-Main, but he did not think that his car could take much more.
Starting fifteenth in the B, Lund would just need to pick up five positions to make the feature and while not as spectacular as he had been earlier, Curt would get the job done finishing in fifth and he would now be part of the thirty car field for thirty laps with $5,000 going to the winner on this qualifying night.
Pole-sitter Jason Robbins would lead the opening circuit, but on his second time going into turn three he would get sideways in front of the field. As the leader slid into the infield, the scramble to avoid him would leave pre-race favorites Johnny Spaw and Ryan Gustin tangled up in turn four to bring out the caution and all three drivers would restart at the rear.
Jake McBirnie would take the lead on the restart, but only lap number two would go in the books before the caution waved again as smoke billowed from Kyle Olson's car on the front stretch. On this restart Gage Neal would take the point and now we would get some laps in under green. In most races with thirty cars on a three-eighths-mile oval, lapped traffic would soon come into play, but with the talent level of this field I can't even remember the leader being on the same straightaway as the back of the pack and that means that we had plenty of action to watch throughout the field.
McBirnie would battle back and, using a slightly higher line than the leader, he would take the lead back from Neal on lap eleven as Kelly Shryock closed in to make it a three car battle and soon Dallon Murty, who had started seventh would join the fray as well. With McBirnie still running that line in three and four, Dallon was able to squeeze under him and take the lead with nine laps remaining just before the caution waved for Texan Cameron Starry who had stopped in turn four.
Once back to green the final nine laps would see McBirnie pulling even, and sometimes nosing ahead of Murty in the corners, only to have Dallon get the bite off the bottom to stay ahead and as the lightning filled the western sky, the checkers would fly over Dallon Murty who would score the victory. McBirnie would finish second, Joel Rust would rally to third after starting from fifteenth, Texas hot shoe Cody Smith started seventeenth and finished fourth while Chanse Hollatz came from eighteenth to finish fifth. Any need to mention again how great the racing surface was?
Curt Lund would go from twenty-fifth to fourteenth and his efforts would land him on the pole for tonight's BIG main event. And perhaps that is one flaw with the qualifying format being used as Wednesday's soup runner Abe Huls is locked in to start eighteenth in the A-Main as well, while Wednesday's feature winner Ricky Thornton Jr. has to start sixth in the B-Main tonight. All he did was start tenth in his heat race and finish third and then win the main event from the pole. It seems odd that this performance would not be enough to make the show, but perhaps tonight it will be RTJ that is "the show".
If you can't be there you can watch it all, plus a $15,000-to-win complete show for the super Late Models with an XR+ Subscription Pass.
That's it for me on this Labor Day weekend and I have not yet looked ahead to next week, Hopefully I will see you somewhere out there on the Back Stretch!
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| Stock Cars fill the pits as clouds gather in the skies at the 300 Raceway in Farley |
