By Greg Soukup
It felt more like September than early August Saturday at Eagle Raceway as Stumpy’s Custom Creations and Nebraska’s Best Lawn and Landscape presented That 70’s Showdown. Clear blue skies and temperatures in the 70’s gave that feeling of fall.
A very large crowd filled the stands and 167 race teams filled the pits, thanks to the addition of the Vessco Inc. IMCA Mod Lites for their first ever competition at America’s Home Track.
There were no serious incidents in the preliminary competition.
The first lap of the Nebraska Septic IMCA Racesaver Sprint Car A Main was led by the 9A of Hunter Hanson with Trevor Grossenbacher’s 35, the 77X of John Klabunde and Brandon Horton in the 1B. Klabunde passed Grossenbacher for second on lap 3 but lost the spot back to him the following lap. Horton got past Klabunde on lap 8 to take over the third spot. Grossenbacher moved to the lead on lap 10 as Billy Alley put his #11 into fourth place. Alley moved up to third on lap 13 and took over second place 2 laps later. With 10 to go Bret Klabunde hit the implement tire inside turn 2 and spun to a stop. The Choose Cone restart order was Alley, Grossenbacher, Hanson and Horton. Alley took the lead on the restart with Horton passing both Grossenbacher and Hanson to jump up to second place with Jason Danley putting the 4X into fourth. The top 4 remained unchanged to the checkers with Alley, Horton, Grossenbacher and Danley your top 4.
Billy was a long-time fan favorite at Eagle 10 years ago, making his comeback during 3 runs last year with 1 of those being a victory at Eagle. “I quit 10 years ago when my daughter was born and my son was 4 it was time to step away for a while. Now my kids are grown up; my son is starting his first year of high school. I’ve learned that racing makes me happy. It gives me a little pep in my step. The things I used to hate about racing when I was doing it full time are the things that I missed most about it. Working on the car during the week and travelling up and down the road. We haven’t done much of that yet this year, but I think next year we’ll do a little more of that. I hope I can race another 5 or 6 years before I call it quits for good. Hopefully, this go around I can be half as fast as I was before. ‘m doing it for a totally different reason this time. I try to not get too upset or too worked up if things don’t go right. I’m not racing to impress anyone; I’m just racing for myself and racing for the guys that work on my race car. My wife laughs at me when I say that I do it for fun, but that’s the thing. It’s not necessarily about winning any more, it’s about being out there competing. It’s hard to race when you’re a competitive person and don’t win so tonight it felt great to get that off of our shoulders. We’ve been so close this year but just haven’t put a whole night together. Everything mechanically went our way. One feature this year I thought we were going to win pretty easily but had a magneto go bad. Another feature there was 4 laps to go. That was the night that the purse was up and the laps were up to 30 from the usual 25. I had a lapped car get a little out of control and that cost us another victory. It’s nice to get the monkey off of our backs; we needed this.” I mentioned the battle towards the end of the race and asked Billy if he thought that he could have caught and passed Trevor, to which he said “I don’t
know. I think it would have been tough. If it had stayed green Trevor was making some good laps around the top and Tyler had his car going really good around the top. Trevor is one of the best there is at running the top at Eagle so it definitely would have been tough to track him down. He had a fast race car. I went back and looked at lap times. He was fast, but it’s tough to pass on a top dominant track. Sometimes in a Racesaver sprint it’s hard to keep up the momentum and make a pass. When that restart happened, I knew that that was our best shot. I was really surprised when Trevor chose to go to the top because of the way that the rules are. In most sprint car series that have a double file restart, the leader gets to set the pace for the restart. The person in second place can’t go until the leader goes. That would have made it a lot tougher if Trevor could have gotten going first on that restart. With all of the moisture on the bottom of the track tonight and he went to the top I got a big grin on my face. Even on that first restart early in the race, we both started going at the same time. He saw how much of a run I was going to get so he slowed down and it looked like I really jumped the start. The second time I played it a little bit better but still ended up getting a bit of a jump. I was surprised that Horton got around Trevor; I thought Trevor ran second. Horton didn’t have brakes either, he had a caliper go bad. He’s been running really good. He's one of the drivers out there that when I’m around him I feel really comfortable. He’s a fun guy to race with, and so is Trevor. You can just feel comfortable racing against them, go wheel to wheel and not worry. I won’t say that about everybody out there because sometimes things can get really hairy. All in all, I’m having a lot of fun! We’ve run really well this year; we just haven’t put together a win. It seems like we would DNF or we would run in the top 3 or 4 spots. The last couple of weeks we’ve been fighting brake issues. Last night we changed every single brake part on the car after the heat race. I didn’t have any brakes. We put a new front axle in it because we had some issues with other pieces. It was nice to be able to run the whole feature with brakes. Toby, Rich and Bill work their butts off every week, so it was nice to get a win for those guys for once.” Billy’s sponsors include Jeff Stefonik Motorsports and J&K Trucking.
With just 3 regular season races left, and the 13th annual IMCA Racesaver Nationals a month away, followed by the year ending Stewart Alley Memorial after that, you’d better get your racing fix before it’s too late!!
Also, the battle for points is close with every point crucial in the competition for track championships.
Next Saturday is Sweet Home Nebraska presented by the Lincoln Stars, S&L Trenching and Nebraska’s Best Lawn and Landscape. All 5 classes will be in action, including the A1 Iron IMCA Stock Cars, Avid Realty Sportmods, Nebraska’s Best Lawn and Landscape Modifieds, Valentino’s Hobby Stocks and Nebraska Septic Sprint Cars.
Grandstands open at 5:15, hot laps kick off at 5:45 with racing at 6:30. Adult front gate admission is $15, youths 6-12 just $5 and children 5 and under free.
RESULTS:
IMCA Sprints 26 Entries A Feature 1 25 Laps | 00:09:08.855 1. 11-Bi ly Aley[7]; 2. 1B-Brandon Horton[6]; 3. 35-Trevor Grossenbacher[8]; 4. 4X-Jason Danley[13]; 5. 14T-Tyler Hendrickson[5]; 6. 18W-Cole Wayman[17]; 7. 9A-Hunter Hanson[1]; 8. 15V-Cole Vanderheiden[16]; 9. 11D-Dominic White[11]; 10. 77X-John Klabunde[4]; 11. 2A-Alex Salzman[2]; 12. 32-Trefer Wa ler[9]; 13. 25A-Alex Davenport[20]; 14. 74E-Claud Estes I[15]; 15. 2T-Cameron Thompson[18]; 16. 14G-Gene Ackland[19]; 17. 99D-Mitche l Dvorak[14]; 18. 77 Bret Klabunde[3]; 19. 25-Gunnar Pike[12]; 20. (DNS) 91-Adam Gu lion
B Feature 1 12 Laps | 00:04:22.097 1. 15V-Cole Vanderheiden[1]; 2. 18W-Cole Wayman[4]; 3. 2T-Cameron Thompson[2]; 4. 14G-Gene Ackland[3]; 5. 25A-Alex Davenport[7]; 6. 4W-Nathan Weiler[5]; 7. 9-Kevin Rutherford[10]; 8. 8B-Kaedon Thurman[6]; 9. 36-Rick Hansen[8]; 10. 3G Dylon Knudson[11]; 11. (DNS) 3T-Dan Satriano
Heat 1 10 Laps | 00:02:18.693 1. 9A-Hunter Hanson[1]; 2. 2A-Alex Salzman[2]; 3. 35-Trevor Grossenbacher[6]; 4. 77-Bret Klabunde[3]; 5. 4X-Jason Danley[7]; 6. 15V-Cole Vanderheiden[5]; 7. 18W-Cole Wayman[8]; 8. 25A-Alex Davenport[4]; 9. 9-Kevin Rutherford[9]
Heat 2 10 Laps | 00:04:20.784 1. 1B-Brandon Horton[4]; 2. 32-Trefer Wa ler[6]; 3. 77X-John Klabunde[3]; 4. 11D-Dominic White[7]; 5. 99D-Mitche l Dvorak[9]; 6. 2T-Cameron Thompson[2]; 7. 4W-Nathan Weiler[5]; 8. 36-Rick Hansen[8]; 9. 3G-Dylon Knudson[1]
Heat 3 10 Laps | 00:09:53.219 1. 14T-Tyler Hendrickson[3]; 2. 91-Adam Gu lion[6]; 3. 11-Bily Aley[5]; 4. 25-Gunnar Pike[7]; 5. 74E-Claud Estes I[8]; 6. 14G-Gene Ackland[4]; 7. 8B-Kaedon Thurman[1]; 8. 3T-Dan Satriano[2]