Justin Zoch's Upper Midwest Ramblings
Tuesday, November 1, 2005
It’s rare. It’s exceedingly rare. But, I-30 Speedway pulled it off once again at their Short Track Nationals. They had three straight days of consistently competitive, great racing. While some decried the slick track on Saturday night, it never really locked down, despite getting pretty black, and allowed for the best racers, not the best equipment, to rise to the top. Naturally, it helps to bring your best stuff to any event but I-30’s surface, and too-tight shape, is an equalizer. Talent will get you the top at the STN and Tim Montgomery proved again that he’s one of the best in the nation on a short track. It’s all too perfect that a true short tracker should win the Short Track Nationals...Tim Montgomery has had quite an October. After winning the Queen’s Royale at his home track in Farmington, Missouri, he swept the big money weekend at Memphis Motorsports Park before banking $15,000 in Little Rock. It was his 11th win of 2005. It was the second Short Track Nationals for Donnie Cooper’s 01. He also scored event with Paul McMahan a few seasons ago. John Hillman, who owned the 14c that Mike Trent drove for several seasons, was wrenching on the car all weekend. Montgomery’s Friday night drive through the middle of the track to pass Tim Crawley, Kevin Swindell and Shane Stewart to win the show on the final lap was the most impressive drive of the weekend.
Local driver Josh Lofton had a horrible weekend, despite being fast in every race. In his heat race on Thursday, he led until the final lap when he tangled with a lapped car and flipped hard in turn two, following a highlight reel wheelstand. Following that snafu, Lofton ended up on the back of wreckers three other times on Thursday and Friday…Two provisionals were granted to Brian Brown and Jan Howard for being the two highest point earners that didn’t transfer directly to the A-main by finishing in the top three on their qualifying nights or scoring in the top 12 following Saturday’s round of heats of qualifiers. Brown is currently en route to Tasmania for a three and a half month stint down under for Ronnie Dawkins. Brown will race in that country for a few weeks before heading to the mainland to run with the World Series Sprintcars. Jon Corbin is going along with Brown to wrench for him and possibly pick up a ride himself. Corbin had a great season this year but it ended on Thursday night with a broken crankshaft in the 33...Adam Mason drove the family Sprinter instead of his brother Eric. It was Mason’s second start of the 2005 season, aside from a one-night stint at Knoxville. Mason is a pilot and could be making more runs at Knoxville’s big half in 2006. Mason currently lives in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
Robert Bell looked good with a Singer engine on loan from Ryan Jamison, who sat out this year’s event to get his equipment freshened. Bell showed in Little Rock without any crew help but found generous helpers in the pit areas of Jake Peters, Clint Garner and others. Mitch Runge also pitched in on Saturday night after his frame was bent during a frontstretch pileup on Friday night. Bell hopes to purchase the engine and is staging a benefit at the Knoxville Skate Pit on Saturday night December 3. There will be a band, kegs, good times and, get this, tape measure races! [Perhaps when greed finally puts Sprint Car racing out of business, we’ll all be watching those] Should be a fun evening and a great way to support Robert’s racing...Casey Minks brought just one car from El Paso this year and had John Carney II driving it for him. It was just the second time out for 360 this year, including the previous weekend at ASCS’s Devil’s Bowl finale, and Minks reports that 305 racing has taken over the western Texas/New Mexico region. This weekend, the team will head to Perris for the Oval Nationals...Speaking of Texas 305s, Avenger Chassis guru Jay Jonas sat out the final few weeks of the season after destroying his racer. He was in Little Rock helping Tim Crawley and Steven Tiner and the rest of his customers. Jonas has been selling several of his floating torque tubes, including one to Gary Wright, who swept Devils Bowl with it the first time out...Tim Crawley, meanwhile, finished fourth on both qualifying nights. Great runs but only the top three are locked in! Crawley is absolutely masterful at Little Rock but only managed an 11th in the finale. His teammate/partner Tiner missed the A-main. Tiner explained that the ASCS head is basically comparable, in a competitive sense, to the open heads in his home state of California.
Jimmy Hurley filled the seat of Dean Adams’ 4H car and performed admirably. Look for Hurley to have a breakout season in 2006. He’s been quietly getting better and he should win five or six times next season, assuming of course there is a place to race 410s in Illinois and Missouri. Rumors of Jacksonville’s plans for next year range from a Friday night 360 show to Saturday night 410s, but not weekly. Time will tell...Joey Moughan was driving at 8H car, owned by Josh Hicks, and turned in some admirable runs, despite busting his frame in the left rear on the first night after contact with Scott Winters sent him over the berm into the tractor tires in turn two. Moughan reports that he’ll divide his time next season between 360 runs with the ASCS National Tour and the World of Outlaws and National Sprintcar League. He also related that his uncle Jim Moughan is in the final stages of recovering from cancer and could be completely healed and ready for a full season next year. Jim ran only a handful of shows in 2005 but won a big money event at his hometrack in Jacksonville...Scott Winters has not been home to Minnesota for several weeks as he finished out the season with Guy Forbrook’s team, including during Sammy’s win at Tulare. Winters spent a week hanging out at the Swindell house in Tennessee before meeting his father and the rest of the R19 team in Little Rock...Jake Peters has not decided officially but admits to leaning towards running the full ASCS tour in 2006. Jody Rosenboom was wrenching on Peters car this weekend and relayed that he will be running the Smith 33 at Huset’s in 2006 as Justin Henderson vacates the ride to run the World of Outlaws.
I-30 remains one of the few tracks in the country to start their races on the backstretch with a cone. It’s kind of fun to see but the frontstetch cone still makes the most sense to me...Sean Jones has had a great season at Cowtown in 2005 and is by all accounts one of the best in Texas in a modified but he certainly didn’t enjoy his I-30 debut. Jones flipped hard down the frontstretch on Thursday when the yellow came out and the car in front of him slowed before he did. Jones returned Saturday with a new racer for the finale but again encountered trouble, while lining up for the event...Shocked. Awed. Those words, which now have new cultural relevance, are the only ones I could use to describe my head when I heard that Chad Kemenah could be replacing Danny Lasoski in Tony Stewart’s stable. Not since hearing that Eagle was closing have I been so surprised and that was three weeks prior. These are certainly two of the most unexpected things I’ve ever encountered covering this sport...Naturally, even if you tried to escape the monotonous postulation, it was impossible not to talk, or find someone who wanted to talk, about the WoO and NSL [chidingly referred to as the National Soccer League, in certain circles] rift. Talk abounded of where each series would race and how many dates each had. The only thing that seems certain is that each is going to really strive to get 60 shows and 80 may be out of the question. Rumor has it that Dirt has several more drivers to announce and the names Ricky Stenhouse Jr., Jason Martin and Dion Hindi were bandied about as touring drivers...Raymond Stull did his best NASCAR audition when he flung his helmet at Travis Rilat following a heat race altercation that sent the former flying, literally, over the top berm. Stull logged at least four seconds of hang time before smashing his front end into the Arkansas clay. Stull never flipped but his new racer was completely ruined.
Chris Shirek made his way into the Saturday night A-main in his first Short Track Nationals. Shirek stayed south all week following his Devils Bowl run the prior weekend. The 2005 NOSA titlist hopes to either run with the World of Outlaws or the expanded ASCS tour next year but needs to find funding for each venture...Lots of talk about the ASCS moving into the Upper Midwest, namely the Dakotas, Minnesota and Wisconsin with a series that will sanction shows in Wissota country. Details were sketchy and unconfirmed but it appears that ASCS could be on the cusp of taking the mantle from Wissota and Chuck Zitterich was rumored as a possible director for the series. It was passed along that No Dak tracks Mandan and Jamestown may have already signed on with the new series. Chuck has changed up his NMRA website and it is now www.czpitpass.com and hints of big changes. It’s time for real change and a concerted effort to save Sprint Cars in this area...Louie Carufel made the 20 hour tow from Michigan with his new Eagle Chassis for his first STN. Carufel is a first year Sprint Car driver who finished sixth in Sprints On Dirt points this year. He junked his former Daggett Big Max at Eldora but never missed a show. Carufel is a former street stocker, who never started racing until he was 47, and is getting faster and more comfortable in Sprint Cars each time out.
Cody Gardner is a promising youngster from Little Rock who drove his 1996 Gambler into the A-main on Friday. Gardner is a graduate of the mini sprints, which run periodically at I-30, and which Gardner is a former champion...Brad Sparks, crew chief for Dustin Lindquist, was hanging out in the pit area before heading back to Minnesota to prepare cars for next season. Lindquist will compete weekly in the 360 division at Knoxville and make several starts in the 410s around the region, including his first Knoxville Nationals....In other news from northern Minnesota, the Layton Performance K9 team has split with Donavon Peterson and has teamed up with Jason Linnel for the 2006 season....After just one full season, Kevin Swindell is already making noise as a contender at every event. He’ll be fun to watch in Sprint Cars for a few years before his pavement skills take him elsewhere....Wade Nygaard made his first trip to Little Rock and was really going good on Saturday night, after struggling through the first two nights, when he flipped hard over the cushion in turn two. Wade had Randy Nygaard, no relation, wrenching on his race car over the weekend....Eric Lutz plans to mix in more trips to Knoxville in 2006 and will not run for points anywhere. This year, he primarily made I-90 his Saturday night home. Lutz struggled at Little Rock for most of the week but he remains one of the most optimistic, cheerful faces encountered in the pit area in quite some time...Pete Butler was the 2005 I-30 track champion despite missing two shows during the summer. He was 12th in the finale.
That will do for this week. I’ll try to return in the coming weeks but it may be until the PRI show in December that the notebook is filled again. In the meantime, the laptop is in for an oil change and I’ll be leaning on Hennepin County’s library system to check my e-mail at justin@mompub.com. Feel free to give me a reason to walk down there and drop me a note.
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