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Schlicht Pulls Out Win on Soggy Night
Story by Josh Reynolds
STUART, IA (June 28, 2011) – Unpredictable finishes rounded out an almost
impossible evening of racing at the Stuart Speedway this past Sunday night.
David Archibald, David Schlicht, Jeff Anderson, Jake Coughennower and
Shannon Anderson took the feature wins on a night that almost didn’t have
any heat race winners!
The evening’s events kicked off with heat races and following the first
Sportmod heat the skies opened and covered the track with enough water to
lose the racing surface. Almost. The track prep crew took on the task of
getting the track back and after roughly an hour delay the clay took on one
of the smoothest, heaviest surfaces to date! Most all of the cars in the
pits helped pack the track in and for that all of us on the staff say THANK
YOU!
First up at feature time was the IMCA Sport Compacts with Allen Wilson and
Adam Kralik bringing the field to green. Kralik led the first three laps
until David Archibald took over on lap four. Archibald would lead the
distance to pick up the win over Kralik, Wilson and Jordan Peters. Archibald
also won the heat race.
Clinton Luellen and Austin Paul led the IMCA Northern Sportmods to the green
flag with Luellen leading lap number one. The lead would be short-lived as
Nick Roberts took over on lap two. Roberts looked to run away with the win,
but a couple of cautions on laps nine and eleven erased his lead and brought
David Schlicht and Mike Pruitt up close behind for the last four laps.
Roberts looked to have things in hand as Schlicht and Pruitt battled for
second, but as the three cars took the white flag Schlicht drove in hard on
the top side and motored past Roberts on the backstretch. Roberts had one
last-ditch effort in turn three, sliding in low but coming up just short as
Schlicht took the feature win. Pruitt snuck by for second with Roberts
coming in a disappointing third. Jerry Hinton and Casey Gruebel rounded out
the top five with Gruebel and Roberts taking the heat race wins.
IMCA Stock Cars were up next with Scott Bailey and Jamie Schirm leading the
field from row one. Schirm didn’t make it out of turn two as contact with
Bailey sent him into the concrete wall, ending his night. On the restart Bob
Daniels took advantage of moving up to the front row and shot out to the
lead. Daniels would own the top spot and looked to set up quite a shootout
with eighth starting Jeff Anderson. That would all end for Daniels on lap
five in the form of a blown engine. Anderson took command of the race and
after another caution on lap thirteen continued to lead as Marcus Fagan
moved into second place. Fagan tried everything he had but to no avail as
Anderson took the checkered flag first. Fagan, Mike Nichols, Brian
Blessington and Kevin Godwin were the top five with Fagan and Nichols the
heat race winners. On a personal note, I couldn’t help but notice that there
is a total count of close to 600 feature wins among the top four cars. That
seems pretty amazing to me and these drivers should be extremely proud of
their accomplishments!
With skies darkening the 6 Cylinder FWD’s came out with Allen Wilson and
Jake Coughennower leading the cars to green. Lap one saw a violent crash on
the front stretch between Anthony Onstot and Jim Britton. Onstot’s car was
severely damaged and Britton received the black flag for intentionally
wrecking Onstot. This left us with just the cars that started on the front
row. The call was made to have a green-white-checkered finish, and
Coughennower managed to hold on to the lead to take the feature win. Wilson
came in second and Onstot was the heat race winner.
With a close eye on the radar and the sky the IMCA Hobby Stocks entered the
track with the Castellano brothers, David and Phillip on the front row.
Neither would lead, however, as Shannon Anderson moved through the brothers
to take the lead on lap one. Curt Ganoe came through for second and began to
try to chase down Anderson. There would be little drama in this race as
Anderson dominated the rest of the way to take the win. Ganoe ended in
second with Brandon Pruitt, Bill Atcheson and Jason Kohl rounding out the
top five. Pruitt and Anderson were the heat race winners.
As the IMCA Modifieds gathered in staging the call was made to send everyone
home as storm spotters began to get paged for severe weather in the area.
The Modified feature will be first up on the bill at next week’s show.
Thanks to all who came out and braved the rain with us. Everyone sticking
around just shows the kind of great fans and drivers we are blessed with!
Please join us next week for Kinzie Service Night at the Races!
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