Octoberfest 350, Hagerstown Speedway, October 30, 2005 2005 October 31
On Sunday, October 30 I went to the Octoberfest 350 race at Hagerstown Speedway in Maryland. While this is the first time I made it to Hagerstown Speedway this year, having visited Potomac Speedway earlier this year, it is my second race in the state of Maryland for 2005. For those who have never been to Hagerstown it is a rather nice facility with a large gravel parking lot and nice stands. The speedway is a “true 1/2 mile” dirt track with a good amount of banking Really the only thing that is needed to make this track a really nice track is some paint on the rusted guardrails (esp. on the front stretch).
Octoberfest is a two day show. On the first day they have all of the qualifying races and the second day consist of four feature races. They features are three 100 lappers (one for small block modifieds, one for big block modifeds, and one for late models) and one 50 lap race for the 410 sprint cars. Each race pays $10,000 to win. One thing I liked is they don’t have warm-ups or anything else like that – just feature racing on Sunday. After just over a 3 hour ride from my house, I bought my $30.00 ticket and we found a good seat towards the first turn. Because this is a daytime show the track gets hard and slick and becomes one groove. This doesn’t make the most exciting racing, but I knew this going in. The first race of the day consisted of small block modifieds and started about 12:20 (20 minutes after starting time). This was the best race of the day because the leaders gt into lap traffic and really that is the only thing that can make most of these daytime dirt shows exciting. Despite Alan Johnson gaining ground on Brett Hearn in traffic, Hearn held on and won the race with Johnson second and Keith Brightbill.
The late model race was second on the agenda. This turned into a spin-fest early on and whenever the leaders got anyone near lapped traffic a yellow come out. This race also featured high attrition with only 8 cars finishing. Ronnie Dehaven easily one over Brian Ruhlman and Devin Friese. The only driver that may have had something for Dehaven was Gary Stuhler, but he broke while running second in the first half of the race.
The Big Block Modifieds were the third race. J.R. Heffner took the lead from the outside pole over Jeff Strunk on the initial start and that is how they finished with Brett Hearn third. Despite no lead changes up front the racing in the back of the pack was pretty good. For example, Billy Pacuh started in 2o-something place and moved up to sixth before having a flat tire.
The Sprint cars were the night capper and Greg Hodnett lead the whole way to take the victory over Mark Smith, Brooke Weibley, and Lucas Wolfe . While Hodnett was never really challenged once Stevie Smith dropped out in the early going of the race, Lucas Wolfe and sixth place finisher Ed Lynch, Jr. both put on a good show come from the back of the 24 car starting fiield. This race ended about 6:05 PM.
All-in-all a very enjoyable day of racing and the we could ask for better weather.
My 2005 race statistics after the Octoberfest 350 are:
Races: 47
Tracks: 29 (17 new)
States: 15 (3 new)