Thunderbolts and lightning were very, very frightening but it was rain that washed out the Kupper Chevrolet Dakota Classic Modified Tour stop at the Estevan Motor Speedway Monday night.
The heat races got off largely on time and without major incidents but just as the street stock cars were taking their laps on the track to warm up for their A feature races, the heavens opened up and buckets of rain came down onto the track. While a little bit of rain could have worked, by the time the rain came down hard, it was only a matter of moments before organizers called it a night.
“Last year we had a very similar kind of evening where we had rain and it only rained for 10-15 minutes and we were able to bring the track back and ended up finishing the race,” said EMS president Byron Fichter.
In 2017 the green flag went up on schedule at 7 p.m. and fans were leaving the speedway at about 1 a.m. the next morning. When the first few raindrops fell, there was a thought to keep going but those raindrops came harder and harder until officials were left with no choice but to cancel the features.
“I think there was quite a bit of hope,” Fichter said. “In this instance I think it ended up raining for half and hour or 45 minutes and it was too much. You can’t come back from that.
The heat races were entertaining to the large crowd who braved the threat of elements taking over. There was a field of 50 IMCA modifieds in the heats that had been whittled down to 29 by the time the heats and B features were done, plus a field of 39 street stocks that had been chopped to a field of 28 through the heats and the B features.
“I believe everyone ends up getting last place points and they split the purse evenly among all the (qualified) drivers,” said Fichter.
Estevan’s Austin Daae and Jeremy Swanson were leading the pack for the street stocks in the first two positions. West Union, Iowa’s Justin O’Brien and veteran racer Marlyn Seidler of Underwood, N.D. were in the top two spots in the Modifieds.
“The track was pretty good and I was actually pretty happy because our local drivers were showcasing that the home turf was good for them,” Fichter said. “It was good because they might not have been having luck at other stops on the tour. Some of the guys haven’t even raced the tour at all until racing last night were qualified for the feature. It was kind of cool for our guys to be playing a spoiler, for lack of a better term.”
The six-city tour had races scheduled for Tuesday at Williston, N.D. and Dickenson, N.D. Wednesday and will conclude Thursday with a race night in Mandan, N.D. On the tour, leading the pack for the modifieds was Brookfield, MO’s Hunter Marriott with 80 points, a six point lead over Tucson, Ariz.’s R.C. Whitwell. The top Estevan driver was Kody Scholpp in 25th place with 37 points.
Angel Munoz of Lamar, Colo. leads the stock car drivers with 74 points, with Ricky Thornton Jr. of Clive, Iowa in second place three points behind him. Daae, the top Estevan driver on the tour, is in seventh place with 68 points.
The next races scheduled for the EMS are the Dirt Wars July 21-22. It won’t take very long for the speedway to get back into racing form.
“If we wanted to race (Tuesday) we could probably race again,” said Fichter. “The big thing is when it rained (Monday) night for so long, after that it takes a couple of hours to roll it in. You’re just asking too much of the fans to stick around.”
Lots of the local drivers who would only race this night also would have had to work Tuesday morning, Fichter said.
