Osky Mid-Season Report

It’s mid-season already and it’s time for my report card edition of Oskaloosa’s Southern Iowa Speedway. There has been some great racing this season so far. The stock car and hobby stock divisions are providing a lot of close side by side racing, rubbin’ fenders, and the Modified cars have been decent racing as well

The Modified class has seen a jump in car count for sure compared to last season. I don’t think we will ever see the days of 20 Modifieds again, but 10-12 cars weekly is an improvement than 4-6 last year. Jacob Murray has won 4 features although only running a handful of races. He has been tough to beat. Point leader Cayden Carter has won 3 features in his rookie season in this class.

SportMod class has been dominated by Jesse Sobbing as he has five wins and leads the points. He had one bad week with a DNF, but no one is even close to being as fast as this guy. Bryan Weyer has won 3 features and Jason McDaniel has 2 wins. Curtis Van Der Wal was leading the points for a while as he has consistently been in the top five every week, but is still looking for his first win of the season.

The Stock Car class is by far the most entertaining and competitive. Four different drivers have won two features, point leader Nathan Wood, Matt Greiner who is 8 points out from Wood, Damon Murty, and Zack VanderBeek. Kyle Harwood is fourth in points with one feature win, and Corey Stout is third in points and is still looking for his first win. Every week this class impresses me with close side by side racing. It’s been great to see USMTS Modified aces VanderBeek, Colt Mather, and Brad Pinkerton competing regularly as well in this class. Pinkerton picked up a win on June 13.

In Hobby Stocks it has been all Shannon Anderson. He has a 15 point lead over Kevin Fee and 6 feature wins. Donavan Nunnikhoven has two wins and is the only driver to have more than one besides Anderson. Bobby Greene, Fee, and Jamie Songer are the other feature winners this season.

The Sport Compact 4 cylinder class is a real snoozer in my opinion. Typically there are only 5 or 6 cars and Merv Chandler has won 6 times. Maybe this class will grow on me, but right now it’s not entertaining, they’re slow, it takes up precious time, and the only gain I see is a few more pit passes and handful of fans who might like them.

First year promoter Mike Van Genderen has done a good job building up the events and trying several new ideas to improve attendance and car counts. His energy is refreshing for sure. Ideas such as discount nights for certain towns in the area, free popcorn, $2 beer happy hour before the races, costume nights, candy dashes, kid rides in cars, they have all seemed to help build to the crowds up.

We have seen some King of the Hill races, which gives the fans even more racing for the same money. He has also tried several entertainment things during intermission for the fans to have some interaction with the drivers, and for the drivers to earn a free pit pass by participating. I’ve enjoyed all of the gimmicks and I give Mike VG credit for trying to add to the entertainment value for the fans. I think the crowd is split about 50/50 on some of these gimmicks. The down side to this is some fans complain about how long the intermissions are, it drags out the program, and I have even seen cars leaving the parking lot before the features started on a couple of late nights. I think on a week night race, people want to see racing and be entertained, but they also want the program to run as quickly as possible and be driving home by 9:30. Most nights are over around 10:00 but there have been a couple of nights past 10:30. There was one week where three features needed made up from the week before, so most people can understand why that would be a later night, but there still needs to be a conscious effort to get the races done as soon as possible and not have intermissions longer than five minutes if possible.

The week of June 13 was a late night as there was a costume contest and trick or treat for the kids. Great idea there… anything to add to the fun for the youngsters I’m in favor of as long as it doesn’t take up too much time. But then we had a SportMod King of the Hill that took 24 minutes and a Stock Car Australian pursuit that took only 4 minutes to run. Some nights there is just too much on the agenda, and more than one gimmick a night really frustrates some fans. I think Mike has heard that message now as he apologized for that on the Tuesday radio program this past week and this past Wednesday night’s show went more quickly it seemed. But I love Mike’s energy and enthusiasm. He certainly has a passion for racing and wants to put on the best show possible and you can’t fault him for that. Hopefully the gimmicks will continue, but be condensed to appease the time frame fans want. But the racing on the track has been great and I think Osky is on the right track in 2012. You can also see some of my video clips from the stands on my YouTube channel at the link on the right side of my blog, including some action from the Deery Brothers Late Model from this past week.

I will have my Knoxville report card next week.