With today's Turkey Classic at the Springfield Raceway postponed to next Saturday November 30th due to the unusually cold weather so comes the end of the 2013 racing season for the Back Stretch. While I would love to go to Springfield next Saturday it is just too tough to get away on the Thanksgiving weekend.
With a cold, wet Spring followed by an extremely dry Summer I was still able to make it to 63 race nights this past season, about ten more than expected and about twenty more than my wife considers to be acceptable. (I love you Honey!!). These came at 22 different tracks in six different states including Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma and Arizona. My season started on January 16th at the Winter Extreme events at
Tucson International Raceway, the same place that I plan to kickoff my 2014 season in mid-January, and came to a familiar conclusion at "Shiverfest" in Donnsellson on October 26th. As usual the
Knoxville Raceway was where we landed the most this season with eleven race nights, but two tracks,
34 Raceway near Burlington and the
Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa were just one night behind tied for second with ten events each. I went to four nights each at the Lee County Speedway in Donnellson and Quincy Raceways, while I made three events each at West Liberty and Tipton. I caught two nights each at Tucson and the Benton County Speedway in Vinton while one night tracks this year included Des Moines, East Moline, Lucas Oil (Wheatland MO), Eldon, Monett, Spoon River, Jacksonville, Independence, Bloomfield, Farley, Lakeside and Memphis MO. Besides Tucson my other first-time track visit was to the
Port City Raceway in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
I invite you to go back through the posts from this past year to see the many highlights of what was another entertaining season and those of you who have followed the Back Stretch over the years know that this is where I usually air a few general grievances as well. Yes, I did run across a few shows this year where you would have felt that the promoter had lost his watch with an intermission being taken well after ten o'clock, and a couple of them were on weeknights. Although I must say that those occasions come about less and less each year so that is a good thing for all of us! I seem to be noticing a trend where tracks are depending upon additional track prep during the racing program rather than before. Now granted, sometimes it is necessary due to unusual weather conditions or just a "swing and a miss" on the original prep work and the mid-event break is more than needed to produce some good feature racing. However, other than the Boone Speedway who has the equipment to do a complete overhaul of the surface in a matter of minutes, tracks need to be careful about getting into the "habit" of doing track prep during what can then end up being a twenty or thirty minute intermission. Work toward getting it closer to "right" the first time and it will lead to a better race program overall.
I voiced my other two concerns in earlier blog posts this season, one being the fact that in
Overexposure I believe that the overabundance of race videos on the internet will actually hurt attendance rather than help it as most will argue, and the other being the persistence of promoters who
continue to run the Four Cylinder division despite very low car counts for two or more seasons. I will relieve most of my frustration over this though by adjusting how I compile the All Iowa Points for this class in 2014.
Make sure that you continue to check in here during the offseason for bits of information that we pick up along the way and stay in touch with everybody at
Positively Racing over the winter as well. In the next few weeks we will start compiling the 2014 Specials schedule that you can find on the Calendar page as several tracks and series have already put their first drafts out. After next week's running of the Turkey Classic I will release the final All Missouri Points for the season and you will continue to find the final Dirt Late Model points for other states popping up here through the end of December.
Have a Happy Thanksgiving and we will see you again soon on the Back Stretch!
