Where’s the Beef at Knoxville Sprint Car Fair Date?
Saturday, July 18, 2009
By Bob Wilson
KNOXVILLE, Iowa (July 18) The Marion County fair board, in celebration of the annual Marion County Fair, gave away half a beef and half a hog each to the winners of the 410 and 360 A features at the Knoxville Raceway Saturday night. Taking home the bacon were Johnny Herrera (410s) and Ricky Logan (360s) at the end of the night.
In the 410 feature event, it looked as if the “beef” would be going back to Sioux Falls as Dusty Zomer ran off and ran away from the entire field. After starting in the second row, he fought with Skip Jackson for the lead and nipped the Aussie pilot at the line on lap one. After that, he placed his sprint on the top and roared away from the 20-car field. At the half-way point of the 20-lap feature he had zoomed to a full chute lead on the big Knoxville half-mile oval.
Meanwhile, Herrera, a four-time winner already this year here, was slowly picking his way forward after starting tenth. At that half-way mark he had worked his way up to the third spot on the scoring sheets. On lap twelve, Zomer’s huge margin diminished to near-zero as the yellow came out for a car stopped on the track.
On the restart, Zomer pulled away again from second-place runner Davey Heskin. Herrera made his pass of Heskin on the 14th go around but by then Zomer had set sail and was gone from sight.
Lap 18 saw the bottom fall out for the front running Zomer. As he exited the fourth turn his car suddenly became unwieldy and he nearly hit the inside guard rail. He crossed the start/finish line in the lead but he had definitely slowed. As he hit turn one, Herrera passed him with ease as did Bronson Maeschen as they headed out of turn two. Somehow his car came alive again but it was too late to catch the two sprinters that had passed him. He later remarked that something had locked up on his car.
Zomer’s misfortune allowed Herrera to take first with Maeschen gaining the runner-up spot. Fourth went to Jackson and fifth to Heskin. Completing the top ten were Don Droud Jr., Chris Morgan, Brian Brown (from 12th), Mark Dobmeier (from 19th) and Lynton Jeffrey (from 17th).
Logan, a pole starter in the 360 feature, took the lead at the outset and was fast on the bottom. Logan too had the field covered on this night as he swept to a near-chute lead by lap three. His nearest challenger was Dennis Moore Jr. who had started sixth.
As the race continued the margin the leader had over his nearest competitor only increased. Finally when he hit lap traffic on the eighth circuit, the gap equalized and the margin began to very slowly diminish. Finally on the tenth lap Logan became impeded in heavy traffic and it looked like Moore might cut into the huge lead. However, a yellow came out with two laps to go for Brooke Tatnell who had stopped on the track and it was that incident that forced the cars together once again.
On the ensuing restart, Moore stayed close but could not attempt a pass of the Logan machine. At the finish line it was only a five car-length gap between those two cars. Finishing third was Dustin Selvage and fourth went to 12th starting Clint Garner. Randy Martin was fifth.
The companion 305 winged sprints saw Tim St. Arnold grab his first feature here in that division. Rob Kubli held the lead for the first five circuits before St. Arnold caught and passed him. St. Arnold then went on to easily take the event. Trailing at the finish were Matt Stevenson, Johnny Anderson, Mark Widmar and Mitch Alexander.
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