Thursday, April 23, 2009

Burgtorf Claims Hometown Deery Victory

After cancelling Sunday night's Deery Brothers late model race, the Quincy Raceway rescheduled the event for Thursday night, April 23. While there were a solid field of forty IMCA late models in attendance, series director Kevin Yoder noted that many drivers who had verbally committed to running the entire series may not have been able to realign their work schedules for tonight's show. Also on the card were IMCA stock cars and hobby stocks.

The first feature of the night were the IMCA stock cars. Sixteen drivers took to the track in hopes of becoming the night's first feature winner. Abe Huls started on the outside of the front row and jumped out to the early race lead. Terry Houston and Kevin Tomlinson were closely behind with Tomlinson gaining momentum and challening Huls for the top spot. On lap seventenn, Tomlinson appeared to have taken the lead at the line and would go on to the twenty-lap feature win. Huls had to settle for second followed by Houston, Chris Wibbell, and Jason Cook. Jeff Mueller started 14th and would garner a solid sixth place finish. The twenty lap feature technically ran green to checkered, although there was a caution on the initial start.

The IMCA Deery Brothers late models hit the track for their 50-lap main event. Terry Schlipman and Ray Guss Jr were the lucky recipients of the redraw and paced the field to the green flag. Guss Jr took advantage of the track conditions at the time by taking the lead on the high side. He would lead the first thirteen laps before giving way to hometown Quincy driver Mark Burgtorf. Burgtorf utilized every piece of real estate on the tight quarter-mile track as Guss Jr received challenges from multi-time series champion Jeff Aikey and last year's IMCA national champion Jason Frankel. These three drivers put on a good show for the fans for several laps as Burgtorf weaved through traffic and began to pull away. Burgtorf went on to win by a straight away ahead of Guss Jr. Frankel would get by Aikey with about six laps to go for third while local driver Jerry Weisenberger rounded out the top five. Frankel was the one to watch as he transfered out of a b-main, started 15th on the grid and passed cars on the top side. Frankel was in fifth place by lap twenty. It was mentioned that only nine cars were on the lead lap at the end of the race. The Deery win was Burgtorf's seventh career win at his home track and 21st of his career. The next Deery event on the schedule is Wednesday, May 20th at the Highway 3 Raceway in Allison, Iowa.

Hobby stocks finished out the night with their twenty lap feature. Jim Powell used his outside front row starting spot to his advantage as he led every lap en route to the win. #25 car (didn't catch the name and Adam Scott battled for second while also gaining ground on the leader. #25 finished second, Scott settled for third, Steve Carlin wound up fourth, and Jake Powers rounded out the top five.

The final checkers waved at 9:45. The track seemed to be in good condition with the exception of a few big ruts in turn one. Several cars found themselves going into that corner too fast and jumped the cushion, resulting in going over the banking or getting caught up at the top of the turn. Keith Pratt was one of those drivers going too high and wound up getting upside down outside of turn one. It really couldn't be classified as a rollover, as he simply went up in the air and landed on his top without "rolling." He checked out okay, although the car has seen better days. One suggestion I would give to the track officials would be to run fewer laps in the support class races. Both hobby stocks and stock cars ran ten lap heats and twenty lap features. While I realize Quincy is a small track, I found it hard to understand running eight-car stock car heats for ten laps. Time wasn't really an issue the entire night, even with the 15 minute intermission. Although I can say that from the comforts of a hotel room rather then driving back the four hour trip.

Check back tomorrow night/Saturday morning when hopefully I'll have a report from the Cedar County Raceway in Tipton.

OFFICIAL Deery Brothers Results
1. 7B Mark Burgtorf
2. 12 Ray Guss Jr
3. 0F Jason Frankel
4. 77 Jeff Aikey
5. 21JW Jerry Weisenberger
6. 69 Terry Schlipman
7. 42 Tom Darbyshire
8. 25 Lonnie Bailey
9. 31G Joey Gower
10. 93 Jay Johnson
11. 14 Boone McLaughlin
12. 99D Darrel DeFrance
13. 5 Nick Ingalls
14. 3 Ron Elbe
15. 39 Rob Toland
16. 41 Matt Strassheim
17. 79 Robby Warner
18. 44 Luke Goedert
19. 25K Brian Klein
20. 15K Justin Kay
21. 28c Terry Neal
22. 45DW Denny Woodworth
23. 77K Stephen Kammerer
24. 1st Justin Reed

Thanks to IMCA official Kevin Yoder for the results. Results are pending the inspection of Burgtorf.

Unofficial results
IMCA Stock Cars
1. 49T Kevin Tomlinson
2. 30c Abe Huls
3. 97 Terry Houston
4. 52 Chris Wibbell
5. 27J Jason Cook
6. 77 Jeff Mueller
7. 04A Aaron Brocksieck
8. 04s Steve Steinkuhler
9. 16 Levi Long
10. 10 Doug Huls
11. 25 Andrew Griffin
12. 8 Sarah Woodhurst
13. 20
14. 11B Jeremy Buss
15. 06
16. 48 Michael Larsen

Hobby Stocks
1. 48J Jim Powell
2. 25
3. 93 Adam Scott
4. 9c Steve Carlin
5. 0 Jake Powers
6. 13 Corrie Eifert
7. 11 Nathan Hayes
8. 38
9. 25G Andrew Griffin
10. 73
11. 26 Nathan Anders
12. 21 Wesley Mayfield
13. 17 Steven Watkins Jr
14. 15 Justin Bartz

No comments:

Post a Comment