Upper Midwest Ramblings from Knoxville, Cedar Lake
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
by Justin Zoch - Although Brian Brown raced to his fourth win of the year, in nail-biting fashion over a bottom-feeding, stalking Ricky Logan, Mid-Season Championship night at Knoxville again confirmed that the first half of the season has belonged Dusty Zomer. The Brandon-based youngster is leading the point standings heading into this weekend’s Twin Features (always a watershed night in the chase) and his worst finish in the eight weekly shows has been eighth. He’s got two wins, a second and a third and has also made the feature at both World of Outlaws stops (Brown is the only other 410 racer to do that)… Talking with Brown pre-race about his win the night before at McCool Junction in ASCS Midwest competition, he asked me how many wins I thought he’d end up with at season’s end. I said 18, a bit high in retrospect, but by night’s end, Brown was halfway there (not likely he’ll catch the country’s leader, Jon Stanbrough, who reached 18 on Saturday night at Lawrenceburg).
It was Hall of Fame night at the Raceway and one of the inductees was Mackie Heimbaugh, who, after sheepishly accepting his honor in the lights on the front stage, slipped back to the pits to watch his son Frankie have the best night of his season. The younger Heimbaugh finished fifth in the middle of a season that has been a nightmare. Coming into this week, he had only made one feature since opening night… With all the talk about the track conditions at the Outlaws stop, the crew got it just right this week and it showed in the 410 featch as Logan (13), Zomer (10) and Calvin Landis (11) all nabbed top-fives from outside the top ten. Oh, and 360 winner, Wayne Johnson started 12th. Johnson had an off-night from the grind of the ASCoT due to the flooding in Missouri and made good on his first 360 start of the year at Knoxville. He’s tuning up the H&H Enterprises 94 for the 360 Nationals. Johnson won that event in 2000 and won a preliminary in 2002 before leaving the finale to chase Gumout points to Plymouth, Wisconsin… The Larry Weeks 00 was missing in action after hurting an engine on Wednesday night at Lee County’s Sprint Invaders show. Hopefully, Weeks and Larry Pinegar will return to action shortly.
California’s Adam Main missed the A-main in his Knoxville Raceway debut one night after getting upside down at Junction City’s event. Main’s father and brother were involved in the ownership of the 35M that Dennis Moore Jr. drove at the 2006 Knoxville Nationals. The car is currently piloted by Sean Becker but has no plans to cross the Rockies in early August… It was a good weekend for the Dover clan as Trish made the A-main in her 360 debut on Friday at McCool and Jack Dover had his best career 410 finish at Knoxville on Saturday. The Rookie of the Year contender was sixth at the stripe… For all the feel good stories out of Knoxville last week, Tyler Houseman and Dustin Selvage are quite the opposite. Houseman proudly brought a brand new Eagle Chassis this week and then smashed the frontstretch wall while lining up for the B-main when something broke. Selvage, meanwhile, led the A-main until he tucked under a Joe Beaver slider in turn four and smashed straight into the retaining wall. Selvage had turned his season around after missing five straight A-mains… Don’t feel too bad for him but Mark Dobmeier went winless this weekend for the first time since the second weekend in May. Dobmeier, however, did finish seventh in the A-main against the World of Outlaws at River Cities on Friday night. The WoO was reportedly a huge hit in Grand Forks, where they had to sell infield passes and, from reports I heard, had to scrounge to find beer after running short.
John Lambertz made his first start at Knoxville since last year’s Nationals and will return for this year’s Nationals. He’s been moonlighting in a 360 this year at I-90 on Saturday nights and has two second place finishes… Gregg Bakker became the fifth winner in five weeks at Huset’s on Sunday night. The win was his first of ’07. Last year, Bakker won six times… Darren Long was a surprise entrant at Knoxville on Saturday and charged to fourth, despite not being entered in the draw. The Elida, Ohio, pilot had not been to Knoxville since the 2004 Brodix Tournament of Champions and will be looking forward to returning for the 360 Nationals. Last September, he was crowned King of the Quarter Mile at Limaland despite having an off season… Kudos to Mike Deavers for his heat race win and making his first A-main of the season. Deavers is a hard-working Rookie of the Year candidate who has put all of his other racing travels on hold to concentrate on Knoxville this year. In the past few weeks, he has skipped high paying shows in Illinois, including this week’s IRA show at Kankakee (which Mike Reinke won) to get to Knoxville… Behind front runners Wayne Johnson and Joe Beaver, Dave Hall again snuck his 51 onto the podium. He has six consecutive top ten finishes at Knoxville, something that point leaders Josh Higday and Jake Peters have been unable to do. Hall is now fourth in points after missing the first two A-mains.
Nice to see Paul McMahan get his second World of Outlaws win of the year at Cedar Lake, although the sentimental favorite was certainly Justin Henderson. The South Dakotan was racing in front of his mother, who lives in the Twin Cities metro area and only makes a few shows a year. Henderson led early but slipped to third behind McMahan and Jason Meyers… With 26 cars traveling with the World of Outlaws right now and the IRA running in Plymouth, Wisconsin, the night before, the local contingent was a little scarce (although 410s are generally scarce around the Twin Cities these days). Davey Heskin, who ran his 410 for the first time outside of the comfy confines of Knoxville (in fact, Heskin had only run Knoxville and Arlington prior to Sunday night), Jerry Richert Jr. and Bill Balog were the only three non-travelers on Sunday night… There were, however, plenty of 360 racers watching the action. Alan Gilbertson and John Nelson are both planning on running next Sunday’s rescheduled “Outlaw” 360 show at Steele County Speedway. It is an early start with racing at 6PM… The indoor racing facility behind Cedar Lake is coming along nicely and there was talk again of hosting Midgets in the winter – perhaps they could call it the Really Chilly Bowl.
I’ll try to return next week with reports from Knoxville’s Twin Features and Owatonna’s open 360s on Sunday and Jackpot Junction Sprints on Monday. In the meantime, I’ll be gathered with family to bury my uncle Dale, who taught that a good heart prevails above all else. Keep me posted of news, notes and other tidbits I should already know about at jzoch@threewidemedia.com.
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