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On Saturday, October 15 I went to the Dirt Track World Championship at KC Raceway in Chillicothe, Ohio. This was my first time at the track and the first track in Ohio this year for me. I have now been to four tracks in Ohio: Eldora, Raceway 7, Sharon, and now KC. All four are real nice dirt tracks. The DTWC is a $50,000 to win dirt late model race and is arguably the second biggest race of the year behind the World 100 at Eldora for the dirt late models. There are a few others that are up there with the DTWC for second, but the DTWC was really the first race to offer a really huge purse in 1981 when it was $30,000 to win.

To get to the track, I had to leave my house about 1:30 AM and drive to pick Walter up and continue on to our friend Tommy’s house. Tommy then took over the driving duties and at about 3:15 we were headed out of his driveway and to Ohio. It only took about 8 or 9 hours to get to the track, including stopping for fuel and breakfast. We also stopped at a county fairgrounds to watch some flat track motorcycle racing. This was not planned, but we drove right past the county fairgrounds and they were racing so we decided to have a look. We didn’t stay long, but it would have been long enough to count in my list under Trackchaser rules if they counted motorcycles. Anyway, it was still enjoyable even if it doesn’t add to my official race track total.

KC speedway does a number of things right. The first thing was although the advertised time for opening the gates was 4 PM. they opened them early because of the number of fans around. Another good thing is that the food and drink prices were reasonable. I also liked the fact that they started on tine.

On tap was 3 20 lap B-mains for the Late Models, a 40 lap feature for the modifieds, the 100 lap DTWC and a 30 lap, $5,000 to win, non-qualifiers race for the Late Models. They started the events just about right on time. The one thing they could use some help with is clearing up wrecks. It took them way too much time to do that. The fields of each of the B-mains would have been a good field for any track in the country, even for a big money race, and the track was in good shape. One scheduling thing they did they caused a delay in t he show that didn’t make sense to me is the non-qualifiers race was held after the third B-main instead of the modified feature. Because there were cars in the B-main that need to get ready, they had to take a longer break. Whereas if the modifieds were running this break wouldn’t have been needed.

The 100 lap DTWC was a pretty good race even if Scott Bloomquist did lead every lap. He had someone within 2 or 3 car lengths almost the whole race and didn’t make a mistake and finally won the DTWC. The driver that put on the best show though was Chub Frank who won one of the B-mains and had to start near the rear but still came up to 5′th. This is even more impressive when you realize he had to pass drivers like Wendell Wallace, Freddy Smith and many other top drivers to get there. The late models were finished about 12:30 AM.

After the late models were done the modifieds were up. They didn’t get off to a good start and Walter and Tommy were tired so the left during the early cautions. I decided to stick it out and they managed to stop wrecking and spinning every lap and the race turned out to be pretty good. The car #707 won the race. Walter picked this car to win. Unfortunately for Walter, he was sleeping in the van when the checker flag flew. We napped in the parking lot until about 4:30 am and then drove home.

I made it home just into time to watch the last IRL race of the season on TV which was won by Dario Franchiiti. Danica Patrick* got into an accident with Jacques Lazier and reportedly punched him in the face. FWIW I don’t think that either Dario or Danica were at fault and it was just a racing accident, but can you imagine the uproar if Jacques punched Danica?

My 2005 race statistics after the DTWC are:

Races: 46
Tracks: 28 (17 new)
States: 15 (3 new)

* The IRL racer that still has not won a race in an automobile race at any level.