Josh Foster of Montrose will go down in history as the first two-time winner on the Hawkeye Dirt Tour for IMCA Modifieds. Foster won the inaugural event back in May in Independence on a track that was totally unfamiliar to him, while win number two comes on the surface that he races on each and every Friday night. The two-time defending track champion at the Lee County Speedway, Foster showed what a home-track advantage is all about as he went up to the top side of the 3/8th mile D-shaped track and swept around Rich Smith to take the lead on lap six and was never challenged after that. While hoisting the big $1,000 check in victory lane Foster was encouraging the legion of photographers to get their shots as quickly as possible because he was supposed to have been at work at eleven o’clock a few miles down the road, but one of his fans jokingly reminded him that that it would take at least a few shifts of working to collect a paycheck as big as the one that he was holding right now, both literally and figuratively.
Rich Smith would chase Foster in for second and those two drivers will go into the next event at West Union on July 20th ranked one-two in the Dirt Tour points. The race to watch was the battle for third as Richie Gustin and Vern Jackson ran side-by-side for what seemed like twenty-laps before Gustin was able to push ahead at the checkers and Mark Elliott made a nice run to come from sixteenth to finish fifth.
I was a bit disappointed with the car count in the Stock Car class as I originally expected ten to fifteen more cars than the twenty-five that were on hand, but when only six of the top thirteen in the points for the four-race series show up, that’s what you end up with. The twenty-five-car field that was there though was solid from top to bottom and they put on some great racing during the heats before struggling a bit with cautions in the feature. Kenny Hansen from Audubon, making his first-ever visit to Donnellson, paced the field early on with a challenge from Damon Murty who just by starting the feature wrapped up the Shootout series points title. Murty faded after an early restart and Chris Webb drove by Hansen on the very bottom groove to take the advantage. Abe Huls came from mid-pack to challenge Hansen for second, but when he and Jeff Joldersma got hooked together both cars lost several positions and were no longer challengers for the victory. Former track champion Jason Cook made his way past Hansen with two laps remaining and closed quickly to the back bumper of Webb as the white flag waved, but Chris kept his cool and stayed glued to the bottom to hold off Cook for the biggest win of his career. Hansen was impressive in third, Wisconsin driver Kyle Frederick came from a mid-pack starting spot to finish in fourth while Jim Redmann rounded out the top five.
The Donnellson Tire Hobby Stock division put on an entertaining fifteen-lap feature that saw Alex Buffington hold off a late charge from Jake Wenig to take the victory. It was the second straight win for Buffington who actually races regularly on Friday nights in Columbus Junction, but who makes his way to Donnellson whenever his home track is not able to run due to rain or high water behind the back stretch levee. With Buffington out front there was plenty of entertaining racing behind him as Jake Wenig and his father Dan, along with Dean Kratzer and Matt Tucker actually went four-wide for second at one point.
It was a long night at the speedway and nobody was more frustrated about it than promoter Terry Hoenig who prides himself on presenting very efficient race programs. His frustration was compounded by the fact that the track comes right back again tonight (Friday) with another full racing program featuring the IMCA Late Models, IMCA Sport Mods, Wild Things and 305 Sprints so he’s hoping that fans on hand last night got enough sleep to have a good day at work and that they’ll be right back at Lee County again tonight for a great night of racing action. And of course, for those of you who weren’t there on Thursday night he hopes that you will be there tonight!
The Dirt Tour split the forty-seven Modifieds into four ten-lap heat races, none of which had less than two caution flags and these four heat races took nearly an hour to complete. The Stock Cars and Hobby Stocks then ran their three and two heat races respectively caution free and the Modifieds returned the favor by running the second of their two B-Mains without incident. At feature time, with the preferred groove being right around the bottom of the speedway, both the Hobby Stocks and the Stock Cars suffered through a rash of yellows where the track or “mine” tires that mark the inside line of the corners kept being punted out onto the track. Since I was announcing these two events along with the voice of the speedway Dwain Hulett, I jokingly offered up my “theory” about track tires and what should be done with them. This is not an issue that is unique to the Lee County Speedway as in my travels I have been to several speedways who have these track tires that seem to end up on the racing surface quite often causing caution flags that nobody is ever penalized for. So as a fan, I find it very frustrating to have a good race come to a stop because somebody tried to cut the corner too close and knocked a tire into motion. Sometimes it might be a back marker who got out of shape a bit and hits it while he is recovering. Or, worse yet, when a front-runner hits it and knocks it out into traffic it can cause the rest of the field to stack up and possibly crash into each other as they try to dodge it.
Back to my “theory”, I jokingly say that they should be filled with concrete so they won’t budge and then we wouldn’t have them bouncing out on the track, but of course that would be too dangerous and would cause too much damage to a car that hits it. But seriously, can’t we do something with them to make them a little less mobile? I mean if one track official can turn the tire upright and roll it back into position by himself, then it obviously isn’t enough of a deterrent to keep the drivers from diving too low through the corners. As we were bantering back and forth during one of the cautions for a wayward track tire Dwain asked if there were any drivers or crew members in the crowd and wondered how they felt about my suggestion. Me, being the smart aleck that I am, I could have come right back asking how they felt about the guardrails in the corners and the concrete walls on the straightaways, after all they are there in essence marking the outside of the racing surface and if you hit them they don’t move so why should the inside markers be any different. But I didn’t.
I do go to tracks where these inside tires are packed with something more forgiving than concrete, but they are heavy enough that if a car hits it, the car spins and the tire doesn’t move much. And, after it does move, it takes a shove from a push truck to move it back into place. Yes, this still results in a caution, but it doesn’t happen as often because the drivers know that they cannot push the envelope without paying the price of either being sent to the rear for causing a caution, damage to their car, or both.
Once again I want to make it very clear that this is not an issue that is unique to the Lee County Speedway and in fact in all of my visits to this, one of my favorite tracks to go watch racing at, I can never remember it being an issue that happened more than once or twice in an evening before last night. So hopefully everybody will take this as just a general "day after" rant from a grumpy old man.
Plenty of great racing action to be had on this Independence Day weekend so get out and support your favorite track. One of our PR.com supporters, 34 Raceway will be holding the Firecracker 50 for the IMCA Late Models on Saturday night. Next Tuesday and Wednesday we look forward to the 2010 version of the Harris Clash at Knoxville and we hope to see you there.
Be Positive, Support The Sport and watch out for those cement-filled track tires!
Jenae Gustin (19J) and Cayden Carter lead the field to the green in the IMCA Sport Mod main event - Barry Johnson photo