Knoxville Raceway season underway

The local racing season has kicked into full gear for 2011 this past week as Knoxville Raceway opened its gates Saturday night.

It should be an exciting year at the famed half-mile with big names racing weekly. Eight-time track champion Danny Lasoski will be racing, as will his arch rival and five-time track champion Terry McCarl. Other drivers we should see are Brooke Tatnell, Kevin and Sammy Swindell on occasion.

Saturday, Lasoski lead wire-to-wire in the 20 lap feature. The track conditions quickly deteriorated from hot laps and time trials which led to rubber down track conditions by the B-Mains. There had been too much wind and sun the two days previous to get any moisture into the racing surface, but the racing still proved to be good.

The race was down the front stretch on the start, as Lasoski had lady luck on his side drawing the pole in a new 12 drive re-draw system at intermission instead of the traditional invert draw.

Brian Brown got by Robby Wolfgang for second place a few laps into the race and Dusty Zomer was able to use a bit of a middle groove early to go from eighth to third. Tatnell did the same to get from ninth to 4th. Don Droud Jr. appeared to have something in the front end break and made hard contact with the turn 2 fence on lap 7. The win was the 94th career feature win at Knoxville for Lasoski. Rounding out the top five were Brown, Zomer, Tatnell, and Lynton Jeffrey.

In the 360 class Russ Hall or Pleasant Hill led all 15 laps. It was an emotional win for Hall, the grandson of Bert Sonner — who lost his life at Knoxville on May 4, 1974 — nearly 37 years to the day.

Carson McCarl, the son of Terry, won his first race at Knoxville in his first ever start in the 305 class. Carson became the youngest winner of a feature at Knoxville at 16 years, 1 month, and 22 days of age.

In other local racing news, the Marshalltown Speedway has been up and running on Friday nights since the start of April but has had to dodge the weather. Last week Newton youngster Jake Strayer won his first feature of the season in the Sport Mod class. Kyle Brown won his second Sport Mod feature of the year at Hamilton Co. Speedway in Webster City last Saturday night, while Stock Car driver Michael Jaennette from Newton nearly made it back to back wins at Boone with a runner-up finish this past Saturday.

Other local tracks to venture out to this year if you’re game are the Iowa State Fair Speedway, which hosts weekly races on Friday nights featuring IMCA Late Models. The Brooklyn Figure 8 races have their next event slated for May 20. The CPR Lawn Mower races in Reasnor have a race scheduled for May 15 at 2pm. And the Newton Kart Klub will host the IKF Heartland Dirt Karting Series on May 14 and 15.

See you in the stands!