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Ventured up to Butler from Indiana for the first time in many years for the final night of the 2 day SOD show Saturday night. Crowd was good, pleasantly surprised at the $25 pit pass/ $15 general admission-not bad for a special show. 18 SOD sprints on hand, Shawn Valenti (Fremont/Attica regular?) won from the pole closely followed by Jason Blonde. Valenti was working the middle/bottom, the high side was pretty rubbered up/locked down but Blonde tried really hard to get it done on the top but just couldn't quite get there. For those of you who have never been there, Butler has some really strange dirt, and track prep consists mainly of the big water truck packing the top third of the track down as much as possible anytime cars are not on the track. As I said, the top was pretty rubbered up especially in 3&4 by the sprint feature, but there was minimal dust on a 90 degree sunny day and the second day of a big program.
The track safety crew deserves a big shout out-besides quick response to a nasty street stock fire, and three flips with sprinters, quick thinking by the safety truck driver prevented a major tragedy at intermission. The track was having a three legged race on the front stretch at intermission, with drivers paired up with kids for a relay-style three legged race. So, lots of kids, drivers, officials and parents on the front stretch. Meanwhile, as I mentioned earlier, whenever there are not cars on the track, the water truck does his high speed top groove packing. The water truck is a late model International and I bet he's doing 40-50 MPH packing the track. So while the front stretch is packed with people, the water truck enters the track in turn one and heads down the back chute into turns three and four at speed! Lucking , the safety truck, which was in the infield down in 1&2, saw what was happening, hit their light and shot thru the infield and slid it sideways at the exit of trun four, putting themselves between the water truck and the people. The water truck was able to slow up and divert to the infield before something really bad happened...Scary stuff!!!
A few general observations:
-Gotta give the track credit, one of the few if not only weekly sprint show in Michigan.
-The speed difference between the top 5 or 6 SOD sprints and the back of the field was staggering-the leaders were lapping cars in 3 to 4 laps after the start/restarts. Frightening closing rates. And, the backmarkers were doing a horrible job of holding any semblance of a line, they were all over the place, likely hanging on for dear life. Not surprising the three flips came from this bunch.
-Pretty good field of street stocks and modifieds, the top half of the fields were quality cars and put on a good show-what I don't understand is the sprints, mods and street stocks all appeared to line up the features with the fast cars up front. Not much passing other than lapped cars. The FWD's were pretty entertaining someone is actually racing a PT CRUISER if you can believe that (there was also a '56 Ford street stock for variety)
-Lots of families/kids in the crown, I think the low ticket prices and reasonable concessions helped.
-As Butler has a reputation for, it was a pretty long program-sprint feature, which was the second feature, ended about 11 pm. The 45 minute intermission didn't help. The track has a nice scoreboard which was not working, the announcer rarely if ever mentioned how many laps were in/ laps to go throughout the evening, but all in all, it was sprint car racing so it was a good time!
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