New Egypt Speedway, September 24, 2005 2005 September 27
On Saturday Sept 24 I returned to New Egypt Speedway despite the management debacle last week. The first race on the card was the make up Sportsman feature from the week before. The track was in no condition to race as it was to wet. This lead to a follow the leader event. Rich Scagliotta, who was second in points finished third, but Rich Rutski manged to finish 6′th which was just enough for him to win the championship by only two points! Interestingly, Rutski won the championship, not only without winning a race, but without even ever leading a lap. Talk about consistency!
After the Sportsman race, the rained out SS Sprint feature was on tap. The track was still in poor shape, but at least it was a little better and Al Liedel past two people on the last lap to clinch the championship by 4 points over race winner Kevin Nagy.
After these races were over at 7:33, we got to watch a some warm-ups, time trials, and a whole lot of nothing for almost two hours. Gee, how fun! Finally we got to see some relatively boring sportsman and DIRT modified heats, and eventually the schedule sportsman feature that lasted just six laps. That’s right, it was only six laps long! They sportsman lived up to their nickname of the spinners and just couldn’t get anything going and after about 30 minutes the officials gave up and checkered the race, giving Gary Butler the win. While the sportsman race probably deserved to be checkered, I found it kind of agitating that the speedway management wasted so much time earlier in the night, which could have allowed the sportsman a chance to run the full length had management not fooled around so much.
Eventually we got to see the 100 lap DIRT modified tour event. While the racing up to this point was poor at best, this race was excellent with Jimmy Horton and Tim Fuller battling it out for the first 80 laps – never getting more then few car lengths apart. Then on the lap 80 restart Horton pulled away from Fuller as Fuller was in a battle with third place runner Matt Shepard. Shepard finally got by Fuller with nine laps remaining and on the last lap caught up to Horton and then passed him on the last turn! What a finish!
That was the last race of the season for New Egypt. Probably just in time to because if I sat through another show ran by this inept officiating crew I’d go crazy. Hopefully next year they’ll do better. If not, I’ll just have to find something else to do on Saturday nights.
My 2005 racing stats after the September 24′th DIRT race at New Egypt:
Races: 42
Tracks: 24 (14 new)
States: 14 (3 new)