The King of America Modified Nationals was held on Oct. 19-22 at the Whitworth family’s Humboldt Speedway in Kansas. The “Hummer”, as it is called, is one of my favorite race tracks. While the Whitworth’s have made many improvements to the track in the years that they have owned it, and I have been coming to the races here, the reason it is so high on my list is because, inevitably, no matter what the weather conditions and no matter what time of the year, the racing always seems to be very good here.

The track is what I would call a quarter mile, and while it has only medium banking, it always seems to slick off yet produce multiple groove racing. I’ve even seen afternoon races here where the track would be black top to bottom, yet the drivers were still racing all over the track.

Todd Staley elected along with the Whitworths, to stage his second big buck, multi day show here this year, after having a successful event this summer at Deer Creek. The feeling was that this is a race crazy area where the fans always turn out in big numbers, it is centrally located to a large number of modified racers, and it is far enough South that even in mid October the weather should stay fairly pleasant.

Of those statements, one has already been disproved while the others remain to be answered yet as night one dawned.

With the format of this event, drivers can select which night they would prefer to make a qualifying attempt, and for those coming a long distance, it makes sense to come later in the week and shorten up the number of days that they are away from home. So, with that being said, the number of cars that signed in to race for the opening night was somewhat disappointing as only thirty nine cars were on hand, although it must be said that there were many quality cars in the field. Actually, since the evening was so bone chillingly cold, with a freeze warning in effect, it wasn’t bad that the show was a quick one with the final checkered flag flying just after 10 p.m. Also, as expected, with it being a week night and the weather being so disagreeable, it wasn’t surprising that the crowd could politely be described as somewhat on the meager side. The spectators (and absent potential spectators) may have been “weenies” about the cold temperatures, but it clearly wasn’t bothering the local track officials, and amazingly, “Prime Time” Tony Morgan, the local track starter, flagged most of the night is shirt sleeves before he finally grabbed a coat to do the B modified feature event!

The format for this race found the drivers drawing for their heat races and then doing group time trials with the top six cars in each group being inverted for their heat races. Passing points would then be used to line up the B and feature races with total points earned for the night setting up the lineups for Saturday night’s big events.

While it’s a little early to be making blanket statements of opinion, so far I’m not liking the time trial part of the format. Whenever time trials are used, the program invariably never gets started on time. Wednesday, with an advertised starting time of 7 p.m., the first race didn’t see the track until 7:44 p.m., way too late on a week night. I suppose that those people on hand strictly for the races for the week didn’t really care, but for those area people trying to work and also get to the races, it isn’t a popular scenario. One of the things I have always liked best about the USMTS is that they drop the green flag at the starting time, and it’s nearly nonstop racing once they go green. With this format, there is so much down time and dragging things out while they line of the qualifying groups, fiddle with the transponders that aren’t working right etc, it reminded me of some slow moving, dragged out Late Model series event.

However, with all this being said, a great modified feature event more than made up for any other irritants that the evening may have initiated. Twenty four cars sat on the grid for the thirty lap main event, and it ended up being a shootout between perhaps the two best Modified drivers in the country right now in Terry Phillips and Ryan Gustin. Phillips sat in row two and he got to the lead position after a good battle with team mate Jeremy Payne. Payne was still in close proximity with Phillips as Gustin made a big charge from the sixth row with only one yellow flag to aid him. Gustin caught Phillips and the battle was on. The two leaders were racing through heavy traffic, with Gustin fearlessly looking for room to pass near the top of the track while Phillips was a little more conservative, riding the low groove as he hoped that on opening would break. Gustin pushed the envelope and somehow found an opening between two lapped cars near the top of the track while Phillips got pinned low, and Ryan shot past to take the lead with only a couple of laps remaining. Phillips drove hard into the corners trying to regain the top spot, but Gustin had him covered and raced on to a thrilling finish. The drivers didn’t disappoint in the main, and the track provided plenty of room for racing as Gustin made up his ground and also made the winning pass using the very top of the track. On what was a bone chilling night, I left feeling plenty warm after having witnessed a top notch main event. Now we’ll see what the rest of the weekend brings, both in terms of cars and spectators.

Thursday was day two of the four day show continuing at Humboldt. The weather remained sunny and it started to warm up grudgingly, making it just a little more tolerable when the sun set. The crowd was up some from Wednesday, but many more people will need to be in the stands for this show to be an economic success. However, the expected two biggest days are still on the horizon, so everyone remains hopeful that this won’t be the first (and last) annual event of this sort here. I did learn today that this promotion is solely Todd Staley’s as he is renting the track from the Whitworth family to put this show on.

In the pits before the races started Wednesday, by chance I had the opportunity to visit with Mr. Sillman of S & S Welding in Nebraska, the owner of the firm that makes many of the very impressive transporters used by the top modified and late model teams in racing today. He was a bit surprised when I mentioned that I saw Pat Doar’s new rig just last weekend, apparently unaware that “The Cheesehead” gets around some too. Anyway, Mr. Sillman was a very nice gentleman to talk to. He did bring some bad news though, as during the course of the conversation he revealed the Kelly Boen was retiring from racing. Kelly, of course, is the well known Colorado racer that always added excitement to any event when he was in the pit area. He will definitely be missed by many late model fans.

I also had the chance to talk to Arkansas racers Robert Baker and Chad Mallett, who are making the transition from IMCA racing to the open motor style of competition. They were most pleasant to visit with also. They mentioned that their home track was the Beebe Speedway, and now that I think of it, I was actually at a race in Beebe way back in March but that seems like years ago now. I’ll have to check my records and see if either driver was racing that night.

Young Lucas Schott from Minnesota was in the Keith ride out of Missouri this weekend instead of his regular family owned car. He won a heat race and while he faded back in the feature some, he definitely proved that he can wheel a race car, given that this was the first time he’d ever been in the machine and he was running against still competition indeed.

For anyone who might question how racy the Humboldt Speedway really is, for the second straight night the modified winner came from the twelfth starting position in the main event. While that is impressive by itself, what makes it even more impressive is that the feature is lined straight up by passing points for the night, meaning that in theory at least, the fastest running car for the night is starting right on the pole. Then consider that the winner started six rows deep in the field and you get the idea about how passing can be done on this track, even after a full evening of racing. And of top of that, once the first green flag is thrown to start the show, the track prep crew never touches the track after that point! Whatever Ron Whitworth has got figured out for track prep, I wish he’d share the secrets with a whole lot of other track owners.

Just like on Wednesday when Ryan Gustin used the high side, Johnny Scott did the same thing on Thursday, coming alive at about the halfway point in the main event and then tearing to the front. Making his run even more impressive was that he was driving the Jason Hughes back up car for the first time ever! And don’t forget also that Johnny Bone Jr., who was disappointing early in the evening got his stuff together come feature time also as he raced from sixteenth to second in a race that had only two yellow flags. Jon Tesch, who started on the pole, seemed to be the prohibitive favorite when the green flag dropped but his car got loose, loose, loose as the race went on and he was forced to hang on and finish fourth. It will be interesting to see how things play out for the seventy five lap main event on Saturday, where I think there will be a lot of ebb and flow, with drivers using strategy to determine when to make their move to the front.

The B modified field picked up Thursday also, with twenty cars now on hand to race. This has turned into a battle between the USRA cars and the IMCA Sport Mods. Last night it was the IMCA car of Brian Lariviere that took home the win while tonight Nick Newton held of the persistent challenges of Scott Drake to take the win. And what’s with Drake driving a B mod? He is a proven winner in both mods and late models so I’m surprised that he has to settle for a ride in a M mod.

Everyone seemed a bit more organized on Thursday with the show starting only twenty minutes past the advertised time and with a minimal number of yellow flags and only ten events on the program, the final checkered flew right after 9:30 p.m.; just right on a cool Kansas weeknight.

About the only thing appearing to be missing from this track is a scoreboard, especially handy during long distance events like we will see Saturday, so hopefully that is on the list for attention before the 2012 racing season begins.

Night three Friday saw improving conditions for racing in southeastern Kansas. While the skies remained crystal clear blue, the temperatures started to rise and while it was a very pleasant day for track preparation etc, the winds remained down and it was the first really nice night of the three so far for race watching.

Fifty cars signed in for racing action Friday night with fourteen of them being new cars and the rest using mulligans that they had purchased earlier. With the added new entries, a total of eighty four different modifieds saw racing action during the first three preliminary nights. This was a nice number of cars but it was slightly disappointing to me that more different cars weren’t on hand. I realize that this has been a long racing season with some drivers out of equipment and/or money and a considerable number are out in the fields this time of year to pay for their racing, but for the excellent purse being offered I still would have thought that a field of 100-150 cars was not out of the question.

The crowd was up considerably from the first two nights as I would have expected, but it still wasn’t up to the standards that Humboldt generally draws for their USMTS specials. Perhaps everyone is waiting for the big feature on Saturday as I’m sure that high school football plays as dominant a part in Friday night crowds late in the season as it does in my region of the country.

I had an interesting experience as I visited with Kansas modified driver Shawn Langhover. Shawn was wearing a Dirt Dueller hat and I asked him if he ran that chassis brand. As it turns out, he sells the chassis in this region of the country and knows Les Duellman well. Les, of course, lives only a couple of hours from me and I have seen Les drive since his father Elmer first let him behind the wheel at around the age of fourteen and I have followed Les’ career all the way through outlaw late models to his days at Rose Hulman Institute of Technology to his days with Ford Motor Company’s racing division to when he moved back to the home stomping ground.

In fact, Langhover said he was heading back up to Minnesota in a couple of weeks to pick up a new car.

Wouldn’t you know it, after I brag about Humboldt never touching the race track once the program began, tonight they decided to scratch up the track during intermission. However, they did an odd thing in that they only ripped up the front chute and didn’t touch the rest of the track. As I surmised and later had confirmed, the only reason they ripped the front chute was that they wanted to try and get some more moisture into the front stretch because the track was throwing quite a bit of dust into the crowd with a southern breeze that was picking up. As it turned out, it really made not difference at all and didn’t affect the track an iota.

I don’t think the track was quite as good Friday as the first two nights, but Kelly Shryock still raced his way up from the fourth row to make a late race pass for the win, the third straight night that scenario has played out. It must be taken into consideration that the day was hotter Friday and that the track has now taken three straight nights of pounding also.

It will be interesting to see how the track holds up over the seventy five lap main event Saturday, which might be the longest modified race I have ever seen, now that I think about it. I have been reassured that they will rip the entire track before the feature event on Saturday though.

I did get a few minutes Saturday afternoon to talk to promoter Todd Staley about how the event was going and what the plans for the USMTS are for 2012. Todd indicated that things were going pretty well this weekend, and the crowds and pit numbers were running quite close to his projections that he made before he set the purse etc. for this event. He also was slightly disappointed in the car count but blamed part of that on the time of the year. A good crowd will be important Saturday night but he also has some good sponsors helping support the event. Todd did mention that the plan for next year is to hold this event the last weekend in March in 2012 when the cars are fresh, and both the drivers and fans have money in their pockets and more of a hankering to go racing.

We also talked a little about next year. He will run a Championship Series that will consist of twenty five events that all pay $4,000 to win and there will be a $40,000 point fund also. Along with that he will run “The Hunt”, his long standing series of races that will conclude again at Deer Creek Speedway in September as well as the qualifying events for “The Hunt”. His season next year will be about fifty five events (give or take) as they cut back the total number of races but up the significance of each one. Races are now being placed on the schedule which will get his full attention soon, and a number of tracks have already requested dates. Todd states that he has had a number of inquiries from drivers already about next year, and some of the names will surprise, including a number of late model drivers finding it hard to balance out their racing with the limited number of opportunities available in the general region.

The King of America show wrapped up on Saturday, Oct. 22. The weather, which had improved each day, did so again on Saturday as despite a few clouds, it was warmer than it had been any of the three previous days. I’m not sure if anyone else noticed, but just as the clouds cleared out around dusk, there were some flashes of lightning in the southern skies, but it was headed the other direction and no danger to the track.

The big crowds, that everyone had been looking for earlier in the evening were on hand Saturday as it was a full house in the stands and a packed parking lot. Nearly all the cars returned with only two of the eighty four modifieds not returning for the cash night while the B mod pit got bigger each night with four heats of them on hand Saturday. The M mods, by the way, had at least three drivers racing that weren’t old enough to have a drivers license including Trevor Hunt, who didn’t even look the twelve years old that he claimed to be.

Something that had eluded me on Friday was spotted Saturday in the modified pit and was of interest to me was that Josh Griggs from Oklahoma is using the former hauler of Ron Schreiner from Hudson WI and Phoenix AZ in the winter. Ron, who was a noted late model driver before he moved to the modifieds and made a name for himself racing across the country, has scaled back in racing efforts and in fact, I didn’t see him race at all this year other than in Arizona in January.

A series of ladder events cut the modified field down to thirty cars which started the seventy five lap main event. In preparation for the long distance race, the entire track was ripped up after the preliminaries were completed, with the hope that this would keep the track from locking down for the modified main. The track, which started to take a little rubber during Friday night’s feature was scraped and watered and then repacked. With only two tractors available, and one that broke the power takeoff twice while this was done, it made for a loooong intermission, to say the least. And the bad thing was, it really didn’t seem to make that much difference as the track started to lock down by about the halfway point of the feature race. In all honesty, I never would have guessed that this track would take rubber at all, but I’m assuming

However, unlike many races on locked down tracks, this one still was interesting up to the point when the last yellow flew with seven lap remaining. What made it interesting was that the leaders caught the back of the pack and they were all forced to make decisions whether they would stay in line, try to move out and pass and at the same time, try to get through the traffic. It was like a giant chess match, and made for a very interesting show. It was however, clear, that there was one dominant groove as Race Director Staley called for single file restarts on the last two yellows, which is only done when track conditions call for such action.

Mark Dotson, who earned the pole position for the race, must have felt like a pinball as he was nailed a couple times by other frontrunners, although Dotson was later guilty of some over aggressiveness of his own that ended up taking out another front runner as well as himself.

For Kelly Shryock, it was another big win in a storied career. The wins haven’t come as easy or as often in recent years, but he proved that with the right set of circumstances he can still be just as fast as anyone around. The way the week started out with a motor failure on Wednesday night, even Kelly might not have thought that a win was possible. This probably highlights as much as anything that the format used here gives multiple chances to make the big show and take home a nice check.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the white wall racing tires used by Tracy Schaefer of Topeka on his B-Mod. They were definitely eye catching.

Overall it was an excellent four days of racing with good feature action on all four days. Hopefully it worked out as well financially as it did esthetically and the race will return again next year. Race fans, some who held back attending this year due to uncertainty about the format, etc., should feel comfortable that this race will be well worth their time visiting in 2012.