4M/VT Midwest Challenge
Sept. 28, 2005
Week 23 Update -“Legends Challenge” Update and MARS Cup Final Standings
!!!ANNOUNCMENT!!!
As most everyone knows, we had another message board breakdown over the weekend. The new message board, racing-forums, the was found during the breakdown of 4M went off line for 2 days. And everyone knows how slow 4m often gets? These 2 circumstances have lead to another move in the way we communicate.
Clint Brown (Cbrown/Vega) has been the moderator of a message board for sometime. He has offered the use of this message board and has went in and cleaned out all the old post and added pages to the board to make it really Midwest Challenge friendly. Over the off season, this board will become our MAIN board and for the 2006 season, this board will be the only place the updates will be posted. It will be really nice to have someone in charge of the board that will be hands on if problems occur. We will still keep the thread up on racing-forums to use as a backup as they don‘t seem to delete post like 4M. If someone wants to keep the thread up on 4M that will work too. Here’s the link to the new forum if you haven’t got it yet.
http://www.826race.com/forum/index.php
This past weekend was the last weekend ALL the Challenge series were “planned” to get together and race in the 4M/VT Midwest Challenge. It was the last mini challenge of the year as well as the “Legends Challenge” took place with all series participating. For a while it looked iffy if all series would get to race, but TORA came through after canceling in Missouri and went to Nebraska. This past weekend also closes out the MARS season and a new MARS Cup champion has been crowned.
The MARS series and WDRL both put on scoring races at I-44 Speedway in Lebanon, MO and West Liberty Raceway in West Liberty, IA respectfully. Each of these 2 series were back in action Saturday night at the same two tracks as well. The MLRA and TORA both ran qualifying heats Friday night at the I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, NE Friday night for Saturday night main events. The SMRS cars qualified for their feature to be ran at I-44 Saturday night, but the weather didn’t cooperate and the feature was washed out.
The festivities got underway Friday night at Lebanon’s I-44 Speedway with Springfield, MO’s Terry Phillips holding on for a hard fought victory . This win earned him the pole position for Saturday night’s MARS finale. Las Vegas’ own Nvssei took a hard earned victory as well in this event scoring 160 points. GRT44c and Sozo, Jr.were right on his heels with 155 points apiece. The trio of Cbork23, Budweiser and RikusAngel were right behind those two with 150 poits each. You could have through a blanket over the top 6 players in this race. A multi player pile up coming off turn 4 on about the 10th lap collected both Challenge points leader Jet66 and MARS Cup hopeful Lunkerman, and neither could not recover and both were relegated to finishes neither one of them are accustom too.
Saturday night’s “Larry Phillips Memorial” at the I-44 Speedway saw Bill Frye take the $10,000 paycheck back to Greenbrier, AR. Sozo made the best of the nights picks and headed back to Oklahoma with 145 points in tow. The Pictureman found himself back in the top 5 with a second place finish with 135 points. Track favorites Jet66 and Opp88 held on to tie for third with 130 point each, while Riku and GRT44c took the fifth spot and the 110 points it was worth.
This weeks top MARS performances were turned in by Pictureman(270), GRT44c(265), Opp88(260), Sozo(260) and Nvssei(250). The FINAL top 5 in MARS points in the Challenge look like this:
Jet66-3165
GRT44c-3080
Riku-3075
Opp88-3050
Cbork23-3040
Fetllmn-3040
At Fiday night’s “Al Freiden Memorial”, current WDRL points leader Denny Eckrich extended his points lead by beating his brother Dave to the line for the win at the West Liberty Raceway. Fettlmn(105) sneaked by Sozo, Jr.(100) in the closing laps for a hard fought victory. Cbrown and Riku tied for third with 80 points apiece. Cbork23 held on for fifth with 75 points.
Saturday night the WDRL stars were back at it at the West Liberty, IA track, this time for the Liberty Classic. This time Muscatine, IA’s Brian Birkhofer found victory lane to his liking. Jet66 regained his championship form from the night before and took the win for this race with 160 points. Cbrown and Dennis1964 tied for the second spot garnering 150 points each. The threesome of GRT44c, Fetllmn and Budweiser nailed down the fourth spot each collecting 140 points.
The top performers in WDRL this week wereFetllmn(245), Cbrown(230), Sozo, Jr.(215), Cbork23(210),GRT44c(210) and Jet66(210). The top 5 in WDRL points after this week in the Challenge are:
The “Cornhusker Classic” at the I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, NE was won by Colorado’s Kelly Boen. For the MLRA part of the “Classic”, Jet66(175) took the win in easy fashion over RikusAngel(140). Cbork23 held down the third place position with 130 points. GRT44c, Sozo and Cbrown all continued their good weekend and tied for fourth in is event with 125 point each.
The top 5 in MLRA point after this week stand like this:
Cbrown-2875
Jet66-2515
Cbork23-2490
Fetllmn-2430
Dennis1964-2390
The winning player for TORA’s part of the “Classic” was Jet66, who had a Hall of Records night with 205 points! Budweiser had a strong showing and came away with 195 points. Cbork 23 trailed with 160 points, good enough for a third place finish. Cbrown and Nvssei each scored 140 points and tied for the fifth place finish.
TORA’s top 5 in points are:
Jet66-1210
Cbork23-1015
Dennis1964-1010
GRT44c-975
Nvssei-975
The SMRS took part in the “Bill Willard Memorial” which was to be ran Saturday night at the I-44 Speedway in conjunction with the MARS series, but the remnants of hurricane Rita fell over the track right after the MARS race and washed the remainder of the program out. As of press time, no makeup dated has been announced and I really doubt if there is one.
The final “Legends Challenge” point standings are as follows. The Top 5 will receive a performance certificate at the end of the season.
1. Jet66-835
2. GRT44c-600
3. Cbrown-585
4. Cbork23-580
5. Fetllmn-550
6. Sozo-530
7. Budweiser-515
8. Riku-510
9. Sozo, Jr.-500
10. Dennis1964-485
11. Nvssei-475
12. RikusAngel-370
13. Pictureman-345
14. Chrisdirtracer65802-320
15. Opp88-310
16. SuperD-210
17. 75Phillipsfan-205
18. Longmiestr-0
With Opp88 missing the 2 WDRL races this past weekend, I thought Dennis1964 would pass him for fourth. Well, as it turned out, Dennis did pass Opp, because of his bad showing in the TORA race, but he didn’t gain the spot. GRT44c used a strong showing in the mini challenge to jump from 6th to 4th this past weekend! Fourth position to sixth position is only separated by 60 points this week, and with the top 5 Performance Certificate on the line for the yearend awards, this battle has really heated up! There’s other good battles right behind these 3 as well and the Top 10 is far from decided at this point. The few weeks we have left are going to be quite interesting.
MARS Cup:
The battle went right down to the last weekend, just like last year, and when the dust had settled the MARS Cup found a new home (for a year) in Republic, MO! Cross21 had a strong showing Friday night and held off all charges Saturday night to win his first Cup. I would like to say winning the Cup would be a lot like winning the Nextel Cup, Miss America or the Indianapolis 500, in that you would make your rounds at all the late night talk shows and have to make appearances at special events to promote our game! But…..all the recognition you will get is from those of us that tried to win the Cup ourselves. But don’t worry, we’ll be back again next year trying to dethrone you as Cup Champion, trying to make you “just another name” on the Cup by this time next year! Congratulations Chad, you put up a whale of a battle and had some formidable competition. Like I said before, the Cup is a whole lot easier to win than to keep, cherish your time with the Cup because it will more than likely come to an end well before you’re ready to give it up!
UP NEXT:
Only 2 races are on tap for this weekend. TORA will be in action Saturday night, October 1st, at the Thunderhill Speedway in Mayetta, KS. Also on Saturday night the SMRS stars return to the Thunder Valley Speedway in Fayetteville, AR.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the sponsors that made this year such a success. Ron Mitchell Racing Photography, Speedway Programs and our newest sponsor, Great Southern Travel. You could always count on Ron to set up a meeting for us to shoot the breeze and was always willing to let me use his table before he got there so I wouldn’t have to bring mine in and set it up. LM60Fan with Speedway Programs along with Gene Morton (ShowMeDirt/Budweiser) were the two people who promoted Virtual Thunder most at Randy Mooneyham’s Southwest Missouri tracks. I’m sure Dave with VT really appreciates what you 2 are doing! Brian Garrison and the staff at Great Southern Travel really stepped up to the plate this year, developing race weekend packages that were EXTREMLY affordable for us fans! For what these fine folks have done for us fans, I feel it very necessary to help promote their business. I will keep mentioning you all in future updates and hope I helped to sell a couple of pictures or programs or might have caused someone to jump on one of the bus trips to help you all out in some way. Thanks for all you all do!
4M/VT Midwest Challenge points as of 9/24/05
1. Jet66-12120
2. Cbork23-11390
3. Fetllmn-10925
4. GRT44c-10515
5. Dennis1964-10465
6. Opp88-10455
7. Budweiser-10125
8. Sozo-10085
9. Cbrown-10015
10. Riku-9590
11. Nvssei-9455
12. Sozo, Jr.-9355
13. RikusAngel-7935
14. Pictureman-7855
15. Chrisdirtracer65802-7405
16. 75Phillipsfan-4570
17. SuperD-3910
18. Longmiestr-3175
MARS Cup FINAL Point Standings
1. Cross21-3305*
2. Lunkerman-3215
3. Jet66-3115
4. GRT44c-3080
5. Riku-3075
6. Opp88-3050
7. Cbork23-3040
7. Fetllmn-3040
9. Budweiser-2995
10. Oddrah242000-2990
11. RikusAngel-2910
12.Dennis1964-2895
13. Pictureman-2875
14. Sozo-2855
15. Nvssei-2725
16. LM60Fan-2715
17. Sozo, Jr.-2685
17. Chrisdirtracer65802-2665
19. 75Phillipsfan-2590
20. Temp74464-2370
* 2005 MARS Cup Champion
For a more detailed look at the Challenge standings, visit:
http://www.826race.com/4mvt.pdf
The internet home for the Challenge is:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/4M-VT_Midwest_Challenge
. At least there's an alternative at Bolivar and Lebanon (tier parking). 
...........I pass through that gate between the stands and tier all the time (now watch 'em block it off). The cold ones are on me if you come around! 
LOL
