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Fast and Furious at the Lyon County Fair Special

Fast and Furious is the only way to describe the racing action Tuesday night at the Rapid Speedway for the Lyon County Fair Special consisting of the MSTS 360 Sprint Cars, A-Modifieds, and the Tri-State Late Models. High profile names, young up and comers, and the local boys was the theme. Fast was the term used for each class of cars as they flew around the historic 3/8 dirt oval, including a new track record in the sprint car class as Matt Juhl of Tea, SD dipped below the 14 second mark at an average lap speed of over 95 mph to take the record away from Jack Dover. Furious was the position battles throughout the features with cars going top and bottom, inside and out.
The started with the MSTS 360 sprint cars taking the track with 22 competitions traveling from all around the Midwest and even two visitors from Canada. After setting the track record on his way to his heat race win, Matt Juhl earned a front row starting spot next to Hall of Fame sprint car driver Terry McCarl from Altoona, Iowa. McCarl grab the lead on the start and shot to the top of the racetrack with Juhl driving low to his inside. McCarl would get away and open up a nice lead over the field and would start to find lap traffic on lap 5, but a caution would come out and bunch up the field. With McCarl leading Juhl, Chris Martin of Ankeny, and Jack Dover who dominated the field a little over a week ago had made his way from 12th to 7th in the short time. On the restart, McCarl would once again jump out to a big lead of over 2 seconds over Juhl and would once again reach lap cars on the 9th circuit, but another timely caution would clear the road for him. Dover was on the move as he made his way into 4th. McCarl was a master of the restarts as he would really slow the pace all the way to the starting line and then rocket away from the field once again. Also on the start Dover would jump into 3rd. Finding traffic again on lap 15 McCarl would show his experience as he could wherever necessary to work through the field. Lap 17 brought Dover to 2nd to set his sights on McCarl, but was 2 secs back. Dover would continue to chase after McCarl closing in over the next 6 laps and then pull close enough to take one last shot at McCarl, but to no avail as T-Mac would hold his line and race to the finish. “I actually didn’t want those cautions, that’s how good my car was, I could go anywhere,” said McCarl in Pizza Ranch Victory Lane. Dover was the hard charger coming from 12th to the runner-up spot, followed by Martin, Juhl, and series point leader Eric Lutz. Martin, Juhl, and Kaleb Johnson grab the heat race wins.
The A-mods made the trek to Rapid Speedway on Tuesday with travelers from the Dirt Knights Tour coming to compete with some of the local talent from the track. Duke Erickson of Sioux Falls would take his pole position and turn it into the race lead of Kyle Brown of Madrid, IA and a fast charging Kollin Hibdon from Pahrump, NV. With Erickson holding the lead early, Hibdon would challenge Brown as he tried a slide job in turn one, but Brown held him off momentarily because in the next corner Hibdon would once again throw his car to the bottom and slide to the top infront of Brown and overtaking the 2nd spot. Brown would not go away though as a few laps later he would find some speed on the bottom of the raceway and charge back to 2nd and then a lap later pulled side by side with Erickson for the lead off 4 and down the front stretch and into turn 1. Down the back stretch they would go and coming off turn 4 there would be a change of the lead as Brown pushed by on the inside. The top three finding themselves in heavy lapped traffic would drive high and low weaving through the slower cars all while trying to compete with each other. Hibdon gets by Erickson for second and starts working on Brown. Hibdon kept trying the bottom line, but Brown was doing a great job of taking that line away, but on lap 17 Hibdon got the run he needed down the front straighaway and dove inside of Brown sliding up and the two made contact in the middle of the corner. This gave the lead and 3 laps later the win in a non-stop, flag to flag feature to the 16 year-old Nevada native. “I live in Iowa in the summers so I can race. We were down in Sioux City last night and had nowhere else to go tonight so we decided to drive up here.”
The final race of the night saw some hometown flair to it with Rock Rapids’ brothers Nick and Nate Beyenhof starting in the first two rows, and they brought a big cheering section putting up bonus money to see what they could do infront of the hometown crowd. Nick, who lead the late model race a few weeks back before mechanical problems took him out of the event, started on the front row and jumped out to the early lead. Nate, who started in 4th immediately jumped into 3rd and one lap later would make his way past Jordan Heiman of Sioux Falls for 2nd. Trailing his brother by over 2 seconds Nate would start to reel in Nick, closing the gap, but a caution on lap 8 would put him right behind the elder Beyenhof on the restart. Back to green Nick once again opened up a big lead over his brother. Nate would slip away from the field as well leaving a great battle for 3rd among Heiman, Chad Olson of Hendricks, MN and Blair Northdurft of Renner. Another caution on Lap 12 gave the competitors one last chance at the brothers Beyenhof, but once again, Nick and Nate would escape the field. With 5 laps to go the leaders found themselves reaching lap traffic, but Nick used it to his advantage making his way around the slower cars and using them to distance himself from Nate leading every lap and taking home the win and some extra cash for the icing on the cake.

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