We took in the IMCA Deery Brother and Great American Stock Car Series races at the Independence Motor Speedway this past Wednesday night. A nice crowd was on hand to watch the 50 late models, 35 stock cars and 18 sportmods race. The late model race was also the Red Dralle Memorial race in honor of the longtime driver who passed away last fall. There were also former racers in the grandstands that evening, to pay tribute to the driver they had competed against in the earlier days--Bill Zwanzinger, Bobby Hansen and Ed Sanger amongst those.
IMCA Northern SportMods started the feature action off with ther running of their 20-lap A main. Laurel, Iowa's Racer Hulin led from the start and was sailing free and clear until a yellow flag flew with eight laps remaining. That would put the young Wisconsin driver, Brad Lautenbach, starting right behind Hulin for the restart. Those two would duel closely for several laps, Hulin running high, Lautenbach low. Lautenbach made the pass with the laps winding down to capture the win. Hulin got the runner up spot, Tyler Droste was third, Danny Dvorak fourth, and another Wisconsinite, Tyler Hackett rounding out the top five.
The stock cars ran 30 laps for their main event. Damon Murty drew the pole position with area driver Justin Temeyer along side. By lap five, Sean Johnson, who had started behind Murty, was running first with Murty giving chase as they circled the high side of the track. While those two dueled it out, previous night's winner of the stock car series race in Marshalltown, Donavon Smith, had made his way into third place. Those three positions would remain the same to the checkers--Johnson in first, Murty second, and Smith in third. Fourth place went to Trent Murphy out of Jefferson, Iowa, who had a tremendous run to finish fourth after starting way back in 21st place. Devin Snellenberger, Pulaski, Wisconsin, finished in fifth. I would venture to guess that he is the son of veteran Wisconsin stock car driver Rod Snellenberger.
The 84-lap Deery Brothers late model feature capped off the night's events. Why 84 laps? This was in honor of the late Red Dralle's first car number. Another note of interest was the $4.00 added to the payoffs--the #4 being his last car number.
Joe Zrostlik drew the lucky #1 position to start on the pole and he and Nate Beuseling, who drew the #2 spot, led the pack in the early laps while the 1st car of Justin Reed took over command by lap 33. Reed was extending his lead until lap traffic slowed him a bit. This was what veteran driver Jeff Aikey was looking for as he had worked his way up into second. The crafty veteran was able to make the move around Reed to take the lead and went home to take the checkers. Reed finished in second as he held off Colby Springsteen and Stephan Krammerer who finished third and fourth and Nate Beuseling was fifth.
Though we had to squint through the flying dust and eat a bit of it, the track rubbered over nicely later. The cars did some bounching in the corners as some pesky holes reared their ugly heads. All in all, it was a good night of racing, though a bit late in finishing. A glance at our watches showed it to be right at 11:25 p.m. when over, so it was another late bedtime for us. We saw many racing friends who had also made the trip to Independence, some even farther from home than us, and they had work the next morning, so we shouldn't complain. Besides, we were out doing what we love to do, watch those cars go around in circles!
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