Henderson, Zomer, and Kline win on 3M Night!

After 3 straight weeks of rain out’s we were able to race this Saturday night. We haven’t had 3 consecutive weeks washed out since 1993, and it happened twice that year, one of those was a 5 week stretch in there.  1993 was a bad year.

97 sprint cars filled the pit area to near maximum capacity. The record for a weekly show car count on my records is 98 cars on 7/28/2012, so just missed that. But I have only been keeping track for six years of that number. By comparison though we had 148 cars for the Harris Clash on Thursday night this week. Cars were parked in the cold pit area, the push off lanes, where the push trucks stage normally, it was quite a sight.

Now that we are getting close to Nationals that means several teams were here to test and tune. In the 410 class we had Sammy Swindell, Rico Abreu, Jason Johnson, and Joey Moughan. On the 360 class; Jeff Swindell, Jason Johnson, Wayne Johnson, Dusty Zomer, Bronson Maeschen, Chase Johnson of California, and Josh Baughman of Texas. Josh Riggins and Alan Zoutte also made their first appearances of the season at Knoxville.

The weather was perfect, a nice sunny day, 79 degrees, and a huge crowd was in attendance. There were a lot of fans waiting to smell the methanol.  One of the best stats of the night, no red flags (except for an inadvertent call), and every heat race went green to checkered. Good clean racing all night. We also had a first time winner in the 305 class, Devin Kline.

410 Report
Top 10 Qualifying:  Sammy Swindell set quick time with a lap of 15.406. Sammy was the first car on the track drawing #1 at the draw window. The rest of the top ten in qualifying was Brown, Lasoski, Jeffrey, Maeschen, McCarl, Zomer, Henderson, Garner, Madsen. With 35 cars entered the format was four heat races with the top five advancing the A-Main.

Heat winners were Clint Garner (started 4th), Brian Brown (6th), Jason Johnson (1st) and Don Droud Jr. (1st). Brian Brown was super impressive in his heat race coming from row three to win with a last corner pass on Dollansky.

The B-Main was stacked with Lasoski, Jeffrey, Abreu, Masechen, and Schneiderman. Those heat races with a six invert and only taking five to the A-Main made it interesting for sure.

The A-Main was heartbreaking for Ian Madsen who led laps 3 through 18, only to get caught up in lapped traffic and see Justin Henderson slip by in turns 3 & 4 just before the leader saw the white flag. It was Henderson’s first win of the season in the 410 class and the only two laps he has led all season. Wayne Johnson led laps one and two and held off a good field of cars behind him to finish third. The race track didn’t widen out much in turns three and four and drivers were able to flat foot it all the way around on that end, but still two grooves to race with. Horsepower was a premium on this night and seemed very typical of a Wednesday night Nationals type of track.

It was fun watching Abreu and Lasoski work their way up through the field. The top eight positions didn’t change much with the track being so fast. Everyone was equal speed, but a good race at the end. Brown, Swindell, Garner, and McCarl put on the best show racing in the top ten. The only caution was on lap seven for Brad Loyet and Mark Dobmeier stopping on the track. I’m not sure if Dobmeier made contact with Loyet, or trying to avoid Loyet, but his front end was too damaged to continue.

410 A-Main Finish (started): 1. Justin Henderson (4); 2. Ian Madsen (2); 3. Wayne Johnson (1); 4. Dusty Zomer (5); 5. Brian Brown (7); 6. Sammy Swindell (8); 7. Clint Garner (3); 8. Terry McCarl (6); 9. Davey Heskin (11); 10. Craig Dollansky (18); 11. Dustin Selvage (13); 12. Rico Abreu (22); 13. Danny Lasoski (21); 14. Brooke Tatnell (10); 15. Don Droud Jr. (20); 16. Bronson Maeschen (24); 17. Cole Wood (16); 18. Lynton Jeffrey (23); 19. Jason Johnson (19); 20. Dakota Hendrickson (12); 21. AJ Moeller (14); 22. RJ Johnson (17); 23. Mark Dobmeier (9); 24. Brad Loyet (15). Lap Leaders: W. Johnson 1-2, I. Madsen 3-18, Henderson 19-20. Hard-charger: Abreu.

360 Report
Justin Henderson set quick time for the sixth time this season at 16.267 followed by Beaver, Alley, Moro, Agan, J.Swindell, Ball, Grosz, Zomer, and S.Phillips. 

With 34 cars entered there were four heat races. Heat winners were Wayne Johnson (started 2nd), Dylan Peterson (2nd), Josh Baughman (1st), and Russ Hall (2nd). All heat winners coming from the front row on the fast narrow track.

Calvin Landis jumped out to the early lead but couldn’t hold off Dusty Zomer who would win easily. Justin Henderson started eighth and finished second, and he was reeling in Zomer in the closing laps. Russ Hall was impressive coming from 17th to eighth.

Joe Beaver was able to leap around Jon Agan for the point lead at the end of the night. Beaver is having one heckuva season.

Agan had a tough heat race. He timed fifth and started inside row 3 of his heat with Ryan Roberts, Wayne Johnson, Zomer, Henderson, and VanHaaften ahead of him. He finished sixth in the first heat race and went to the B-Main with Billy Alley. Agan finished 13th in the A-Main while Alley finished 15th.

360 A Main Finish (started): 1. Dusty Zomer (3); 2. Justin Henderson (8); 3. Calvin Landis (1); 4. Jamie Ball (5); 5. Jeff Swindell (6); 6. Joe Beaver (7); 7. Lee Grosz (4); 8. Russ Hall (17); 9. Jarrod Schneiderman (11); 10. Jason Johnson (16); 11. Tony Shilling (13); 12. Chase Johnson (9); 13. Jon Agan (22); 14. Dylan Peterson (15); 15. Billy Alley (21); 16. Nate Van Haaften (10); 17. Matt Covington (20); 18. Carson McCarl (23); 19. Bronson Maeschen (12); 20. Josh Baughman (19); 21. Harli White (24); 22. Wayne Johnson (14); 23. Sawyer Phillips (2) DNS – Ryan Roberts. Lap Leaders: Landis 1-2, Zomer 3-18. Hard-charger: R. Hall.

 

305 Report
Matthew Stelzer set quick time for the third time this season with a lap of 17.404. Stelzer’s motor expired in his heat race and he was done for the night. Tough break as he was leading the points coming into this night.  Heat winners were Stacy Alexander (started 2nd), Mitchell Alexander (2nd), and Dustin Clark (1st).

This feature was an exciting one with Kinder and Kline battling it out. Kline is a rookie and was making only his sixth career start at Knoxville. He did a great job getting back around Kinder. Kinder looked strong coming from fifth to the lead, but he couldn’t get through lapped traffic quick enough and Kline took advantage. Stacy Alexander was the hard charger for the sixth time this season. Keoni Texeira had his best career finish of fourth.

305 A Main (started): 1. Devin Kline (1); 2. J Kinder (5); 3. Steve Breazeale (4); 4. Keoni Texeira (6); 5. Kevin Hetrick (8); 6. Stacey Alexander (12); 7. Jeff Wilke (10); 8. Mitchell Alexander (13); 9. Kade Higday (2); 10. Mike Philben (9); 11. Dustin Clark (17); 12. Tanner Edwards (11); 13. Mike Mayberry (14); 14. McKenna Haase (15); 15. Joe Simbro (16); 16. Christopher Scank (20); 17. Corey Kautz (19); 18. Bob Hildreth (18); 19. Laney Feight (22); 20. Kevin Hiemstra (21); 21. Michael Fishel (24); 22. Lee Patterson (23); 23. Chris Walraven (7); 24. Terri O’Connell (3). Lap Leaders: Kline 1-9, Kinder 10, Kline 11-15. Hard-charger: S. Alexander.

Notes
The Knoxville weekly shows are so competitive this season, and now with Sammy and Rico here for two weeks to tune up for Nationals… wow.  The competition level is going to pay off for our weekly racers. I mean, Nationals is just another race to these guys, the level of competition isn’t going to go up much other than that Schatz guy.  I think we might see 8-10 of them make the Nationals championship A-Main this year, and maybe one of them could win!

Ian Madsen has led the most feature laps this season with 54. Dollansky has led 48, Jeffrey 31, Brown 17, Heskin 12, and Henderson 2.  Terry McCarl is leading points but amazingly has yet to lead one lap. That says something for T-Mac’s consistency and effort each week.

Craig Dollansky timed 22nd this week which was surprising. He hadn’t qualified out of the top ten all season.  It’s been a pleasure to have Dollansky back home at Knoxville this season and he now has Guy Forbrook as his crew chief.  But if he isn’t a top five car at Nationals after racing here all season to prepare, it will have to be considered a disappointment for his team. He recovered from his 18th starting spot in the A-Main to finish tenth this week. He has won three features this season, all from the front row.

No 305’s this coming week. With the week before the 360 Nationals comes more cars to test and tune and we can expect close to 80 cars in the pit area for the 410 and 360 classes, so with only 100 concrete pit stalls available, and planning to save some moisture in the track, the 305’s will be off until the Saturday night of the 360 Nationals. That Saturday will be tough to get everyone on to a concrete pit stall since we expect 85-90 360 cars to be on hand that night. 

Did you get your 3M bags and KCP Mugs last week? Always great to see free giveaway promotions at the track like that. 

Don't forget to listen to my radio show on Thursday nights on KBOE 104.9FM in Oskaloosa, it also streams on www.kboeradio.com and you can find some archive footage there.

One more week and it all starts!  Get rested up on sleep now while you can. But it’s always hard to sleep with so much anticipation!   

The Nationals qualifying night splits should be released on the website any day.

I should have the annual BHG Power Rankings out next week!