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Well, where do you want me to start? Going to try to do this in a chronological order, I guess.
Walk in to the stands at about 6:45 to see an infield that is as empty as it has ever been for a weekly show. 13 410's signed in with plenty of guys not showing (Garner, M. Jones, Riedel, A. McCarl). I think there were only 16 360's to add to that as well. Major disappointment not having guys show up for opening night, but it was probably a smart move in the long term.
The track is junk as hot laps are being completed. Ruts everywhere in the turns. The anthem gets finished at 7:09 (9 minutes later than the advertised 7PM sharp start time). So instead of time trials for the 410s, we get to watch the grader come out and try to fix the track! I shit you not, has anyone ever seen the grader come out as the anthem just finished, EVER?! At this point, I put all my notes away because it would not be worth writing a complete report on this evening, but things kept getting worse or better (depending on how you looked at things).
Time trials get scratched in order to save time. Yup, cuz it takes 15+ minutes to do them when there are only 13 cars signed in (sarcasm). The stocks are on the track and the track returns to what it was before; shitty, rutty, and no cushion at all. Unless you consider a cushion the ruts that were 2 feet deep, then there was a cushion.
As the 360 heats were about to push off, about 8 total sprints decided they had seen enough and took their mules and cars out back calling it a night! Again, this may get redundant, but as anyone seen multiple cars call it a night during the racing program in order to save their equipment, EVER?! Off the top of my head they were: Hansen Motorsports cars of Chad Meyer and Cody Hansen, Johnn Cressman, Brock Dump, Dustin Beenken, Eric Lutz, Jordan Martens, and a few others. Gregg Bakker left his car on the infield but he put a LR shoe on and decided to watch from the infield.
The heats sucked as guys were hooking ruts and looking to survive and not flip. Single-file affairs everywhere. I was packing my stuff up and ready to leave when I got a text from the infield saying the 23w was on the outside pole for the feature, so I decided to stay and freeze my balls off for another hour.
The 360 feature was single-file for all 15 laps and actually had a last corner pass because the leader of Dusty Wasmund couldn't get around the lapped traffic due to the ruts and lack of a racing surface. Congrats to Casey Abbas on winning.
The 410 feature had Winters checked out on the field 6 laps in when he spun out by himself in turn 3. Of course, why wouldn't that have happened? Anyways, Mark Dobmeier is struggling to make a single pass and finally got up to 2nd to try to run Robby Wolfgang down. He was able to do that, but hooked some ruts on the last few laps and finished right on his tail tank as Robby won his first career 410 feature. Congrats to Robby on holding on to win, but when Mark Dobmeier, can't do shit to pass guys with 0 career 410 wins coming into the night, that should tell you how pathetic the track was!
Next week should be interesting. My guess is that the racers continue to show up (the few that showed up last night, that is), but it'll be interesting how many fans actually stick to their word and won't show next week and the weeks to come as they have said on the local board. I'll be back next week, mainly because my work has free passes for the season, but it would be different if I was a paying customer.
I was more pumped for the Huset's opener than I was for the Outlaw race at Jackson the night before, because Huset's can be the best short track in America. When they had the track figured out last year, I did see the best weekly racing of my short life. So lets get Lunstra's equipment back out to the track and let Bakker do his magic with track prep, because for the 2nd straight year, the Rubin's cannot figure out their own track prep...
That was a little longer than expected, but that's how it went down and I feel like I needed to let everyone out there know what really happened. Now its time to finish up my report from Jackson and get that posted as well.
One last thing, please drop the "Home of the Professionals" mantra because it couldn't be anymore further from true.
BIG J
"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."
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