50th season opener at Eagle is in the books

I apologize for not getting this up last Sunday when I wrote it. I SWORE that I hit publish, but evidently not.

Well, the wife and I are back working at Eagle Raceway. We worked a practice night Thursday and then the first actual racing Saturday night.

I was really pleased and surprised at the size of the crowd; it was REALLY good, considering that the temps got down to the mid-40's by the time the racing ended a little after 11. Yes, I know that's late, but when you have 164 cars in the pits, it's going to take some time to get all of the races run. I guess that's the price that Roger pays for being a good promoter.

I'll be honest here and say that it was TOUGH getting back into the swing of things, even after having a bit of a free trial Thursday. Thank God Michelle had someone come up to handle the IMCA licenses and a lot of the minor registrations!! I was really worried about being able to keep track of the racing, get it down in a manageable format to allow me to write the story for the website, but it looks like I made it through with only minor hitches along the way. The story is up on the website and e-mailed to those who requested it and the media outlets as well.

As for the evening's events, I'd say that it was a great night. The track started out a little dusty, but the moisture ended up coming up and the track went dry-slick. I personally prefer a dry-slick track, because as the sprint winner Jeff Edgerington said "you have to drive on a dry-slick track". You can't just stomp and steer. Yes, there were ruts in the track, but that comes from the wet weather we've had lately. Most of the drivers I interviewed agreed; the ones who actually knew about such things did anyway.

Of course, one of the big stories of the night was the new sprint car class having it's first races at Eagle. We only got 16 cars, which is about the same as we were getting in the 360's last year, but I thought the racing was pretty damned good! In the feature defending 360 sprint car champion Mike Boston got in a car for someone else because his motor wasn't ready yet. He won his heat and got DQéd for being too light at the scales, so he started at the back of the feature. He ran up to second before losing the nose wing from his car and being sent to the back. Well, as you would expect from Mike, he ran that thing back to second and actually took the lead for a short time right at the end. His banzai move put him out front, but he slid up and Jeff took the lead back and held on for the win.

I'd say that the 305 Racesaver class has a real future at Eagle; at least I sure hope so. Rumor has it that we lost 1 of the new drivers who decided to give the class a shot because he can't handle the sprint (he hit the wall both Thursday and Saturday). I surely hope not, because we need all of the cars we can get to be sure this class goes over. Then there's the case of the young ladies in the class. They both did VERY well!!! Given that neither of them has ever raced a sprint car before (at least not a full-sized one), I'd say that they did very well. Shayle Bade ran 5th and Lacey Tuttle grabbed 6th in their inaugural feature.

All in all, a good night. A long night, and a tiring night, but a good one.

Here is the link to my write-up of the events and the full results: http://www.eagleraceway.com/EagleRaceway/?p=4383