We have been tracking the Missouri State Points for twelve years now and after some of the same names at the top of the standings the past few years there is a changing of the guard in 2018 with four drivers earning their first ever title. The Missouri Points are tabulated using the same 5-point scale that is used in the All Iowa Points with only events at dirt tracks in Missouri counting toward these standings.
It has been since 2012-2013 when Jason Russell repeated as champion in the Late Models and now following in the footsteps of Vance Wilson, Jesse Stovall, Justin Wells and Logan Martin, Dustin Hodges adds his name to the list of one time All Missouri Points champions in the division. Hodges had more top five finishes than any other driver in the division with sixteen this season and seven of those were feature wins for the Fulton driver. Craig Wood who had six feature wins early in the season finishes as the runner-up while Kaleb Stolba ranks third with seven wins to his credit as well. Russell was eighth and the defending champion Martin was thirteenth in this year's final rundown.
Jackie Dalton has been the Modified champion the past two years, but when one of his regular tracks in Monett dropped the class for 2018, Dalton switched to a B-Mod opening the door for a new Missouri Points champ in the A-Mods and Mayetta, Kansas, driver Aaron Fuqua filled the position. Fuqua, the 2018 USRA Modified National Champion, won sixteen times on Missouri tracks and had twenty-five top five finishes in the Show Me state. He also had a solid season in Kansas as well where he ranked fourth and his combined points will rank him near the top when we release our Best of the Midwest standings in a few days. Another border crosser, Dennis Elliott from Mount Ayr, Iowa, is the runner-up on this list with eight wins in twenty-three top five finishes while third goes to Chad Clancy who scored four feature wins on the season. The 2015 champion Terry Schultz tied for fourth and the two-time defending Limited Modified champion Ryan Gillmore finished sixth.
Before Gillmore's two year reign in the Limited Mods, J.C. Morton was a four-time champion (2012-2015) and Lebanon's Kris Jackson was close behind pretty much every year. This year Jackson is the dominant champion winning an amazing twenty-seven times as part of thirty-nine top five finishes. Add in a another win or two in other states and Jackson is the odds on favorite to win the Best In The Midwest title for this division. Even though his point total is impressive, Jackie Dalton is a distant runner-up with ten feature wins to his credit and Marshfield's Sam Petty also eclipsed the century mark winning sevn times along the way and often chasing Jackson in as the runner-up. The four time champ Morton ranks fifth this year while the 2009 champion Brad Smith is eighth on this list.
The addition of the Racesaver 305 class at the US 36 Raceway and the fact that five time champion Jonathan Cornell missed nearly half of the season due to a health issue combine to give us a new champion in the winged Sprint Car division with Lincoln, Nebraska's, Matt Richards taking the title. Eight wins and fifteen top five finishes gave Richards a six point edge over fellow Nebraskan Tyler Drueke who picked up five wins and seven runner-up finishes in his trips to Missouri in 2018. Miles Paulus is the best of the 360 bunch in third as he won three times and had the most top five finishes with sixteen. Cornell bounced back for ninth in the final standings while the All Iowa Points 305 champion Mike Houseman Jr. completed the top ten in Missouri.
The full listing for all four divisions follow.
Monday, December 3, 2018
Saturday, December 1, 2018
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.
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.
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