During the first stop of the Carpet Land Nebraska 360 Sprint's "Week of Speed", 17 winged wonders were on hand at the 4/10 mile high banked, high speed I-80 Speedway. Although the car count has slipped a bit, we were happy to have that number of cars for a weeknight race, plus attrition has hurt the car count as well. However, the shortage of cars did not translate to a shortage of racing action, as the races were fast with lots of wheel to wheel racing action!
The first heat saw Stu Snyder in the Eldon Rhoten 23s jump out to an early lead from his pole position spot and utilized the clean air to hold off a hard charging Jack Dover, who finished 2nd followed by Jordan Boston who finished 3rd and Billy Alley who finished 4th.
In the second heat, Don Droud, Jr., who was racing for the first time with the Nebraska 360 Sprints charged to the lead from his 2nd starting spot and held off a fast closing Ryan Roberts for the win. Following Roberts was Tyler Drueke in 3rd and Doug Lovegrove finishing 4th.;
After completion of the two heats, the top 8 in passing points were; Dover, Roberts, Droud, Alley, Snyder, Boston, Drueke and Lovegrove. After the redraw, Roberts and Dover drew for the front row of the evenings A Feature.
The A Feature saw Dover, from Springfield, NE in the Team Dover Racing #53 jump out to an early lead, with numerous battles for the runner-up position among Roberts, Droud and Drueke. The racing action was action packed throughout the track until the 11th lap when a spinning Gage Dorr brought out the yellow flag for the first time in 77 laps of green flag racing. After the restart, Dover again jumped out to the lead followed closely by Roberts and Droud. With 4 laps remaining in the 25 lap feature event, Droud slipped by Roberts and held on to finish behind Dover who made his way to the Fuse Weekly Winner's Circle. Final results of the feature was: Dover, Droud, Roberts, Drueke, Lovegrove, Snyder, Jason Danley, Boston, Tige Jensen, Trevor Grossenbacher, Cody Ledger, John Klabunde, Jeff Lowery, Tadd Holliman, Gage Dorr, Billy Alley and Adam Guillion.
After the trophy presentation, Dover pulled the 3 pill and Ryan Roberts was the winner of the Electrical Stystems, Inc (ESI) challenge and added an additional $300 to his night's winnings.
Next up is the 2nd stage of the "Week of Speed" this Saturday, July 20th at the 1/3 mile Butler County Speedway, located North of Rising City, Nebraska for their season championship race. The last leg of the "Week of Speed" will be Wednesday, July 24th at Denison, IA at the newly designed dirt track. C'mon out and see Nebraska's premier sprint cars in action!
- Dennis Parker on Jul 19, 2013
- Article Date: 7/19/2013 by Randy Palmer