Adams, Myers, Checkalski, Mindock & Truchon Grab ABC Raceway Wins
by Nick Gima
Ashland, WI, July 20 – Kids took to the track on Saturday night for a couple of special reasons, while feature action included a third-generation first-time winner at the ABC Raceway.
Beautiful midsummer weather greeted fans young and old alike to visit drivers on the front straight during the pre-race Meet the Drivers Night activities, presented by Heartland Communications Group of Ashland and Iron River. Then the younger fans were invited back onto the track for bike races, presented by Chicago Iron & Supplies of Ashland, during intermission.
Cameron’s Kevin Adams is certainly one of the region’s – if not one of WISSOTA’s – all-time greatest drivers, with multiple national and track titles and scores of feature wins. But to say his success at ABC has been sporadic may be putting it mildly, with only two feature wins here, in 2015 in a Modified, and the 2019 Red Clay Classic title in a Midwest Mod.
On this night, however, no one was going to deny Adams of a third win here, as he dominated the 20-lap Fuhrman Designs WISSOTA Modified A-main.
Adams started on the pole and led Jeff Spacek, Marcus Dunbar, Brady Uotinen and others in a tight pack for the first lap, but within two more circuits Adams had built a substantial 1.6-second advantage. The only thing that kept the field close to the leader was a spin by Justin Weinberger on lap 2 and the subsequent restart, but Adams was more than up to the challenge, running away again to a three-second lead by mid-race.
Behind him, drivers were swapping positions with frequency, as 15th-starting Mike Anderson joined the tail-end of a tight five-car pack debating sixth, Kennedy Swan worked her way by Jake Hiatt for fourth on lap 6, and Uotinen challenged and eventually got by Spacek on lap 8 for second. That type of action continued throughout the second half of the run as well, but without another caution-flag slowdown Adams continued his torrid pace and won by 4.039 seconds – a full straightaway – ahead of Uotinen.
Swan got by Spacek for third just after the halfway point of the race, and Anderson, the division’s points leader, capped his charge to the front in fifth.
It was a good night for drivers from Cameron to visit Ashland, as Curt Myers captured the win in the Superior Floral WISSOTA Super Stocks. Like Adams did later, Myers started on the pole and led every lap, although Myers’ challengers were a bit closer.
Myers slid up in front of Myron Basina in the first pair of turns to start the 20-lap affair and took advantage of the higher lane to lead a logjam of cars, including Basina, Patrick Beeksma and Shawn McFadden, racing for second. And like in the Mod feature later, Myers had to survive a lap 2 restart, after Jake Nevala and visiting Jason Melton collected and spun in turn 2.
From there Myers’ race differed greatly from Adams’. McFadden took advantage of the double-wide restart to move by Beeksma into second and applied a steady dose of heat on the leader, while eighth-starting Steve Stuart worked his way by Beeksma with an inside pass on lap 6. Stuart was well behind the lead pair at that point, but he ran some incredibly quick laps to catch McFadden by mid-race.
Stuart dove low on lap 11 and slid up across the nosepiece of McFadden’s car to take second – a move so close that McFadden’s car lifted the back of Stuart’s down the front straight. Their tussle gave Myers a little breathing room as he was catching the tail of the field, and on lap 16 he was working his way through slower traffic. But Stuart soon closed on Myers, with McFadden in tow, before Melton spun with two laps remaining, setting up a shootout.
Myers held on for his 26th career win at Ashland – and, like Adams, his first since the 2019 Red Clay Classic – by a winning margin of just two-thirds of a second. McFadden came back to edge Stuart by a bumper at the stripe for second and took over the division’s points lead, and Matt Deragon came home a steady fifth.
During Stuart’s mid-race charge he posted a lap of 16.361 seconds (82.513 mph), shaving three one-thousandths of a second off of his own track record for Super Stocks.
Evan Checkalski of Duluth, MN, joined his grandfather Dennis and his father Kelly as an ABC Raceway feature winner as he led flag-to-lag in a 20-lap Lightning Storm Graphics WISSOTA Midwest Modified feature that ran non-stop and took only six minutes to complete.
Checkalski started on the pole and, after a brief discussion with Cory Jorgensen, assumed command of the race, stretching his lead to over a second-and-a-quarter within the first four laps. A distance back of Jorgensen, Ryan Barningham was busy fending off challenges from Jesse Polson and Dunbar for third.
By lap 8 Dunbar had taken over third and spent lap 9 reeling in Jorgensen, getting by him on lap 10. The two-time track champ then cut into Checkalski’s significant margin, catching and pulling alongside the leader as the pair caught and worked their way through slower traffic with five laps remaining. But as Checkalski changed his line to take away Dunbar’s low-lane momentum, Dunbar dove lower and bumped into two of the large grader tires that mark the inside of turn 4, damaging his car and dropping him back.
Checkalski sped off to his landmark win by nearly two-and-a-half seconds over Dunbar, who took over the divisional points lead, while Jorgensen nipped Polson at the line by 26 one-thousandths of a second in a photo finish for third. Four-time Mid-Mod champ Paul Suzik, who started 11th, was scored in fifth.
Brent Mindock of Prentice won his third straight Patsy’s Bar WISSOTA Pure Stocks feature, and seventh of his career here, in what one might argue was the most exciting race of the night, as the top five cars finished within 1.65 seconds – and Mindock’s winning margin took up about half of that.
Polestarter Tom Treviranus edged out Shane Basina for the initial lead, while close behind them nine of the 11 starters made up a tight-knit pack. As Treviranus pulled away a bit during the opening circuits, the pack ganged up on Basina, and positions were swapped with wild abandon.
Mindock, who had started eighth of the 11, had sliced his way to second by lap 5 and was better than three-quarters of a second back of the leader, but within four laps he caught Treviranus and made an inside move work to take the lead. The pack chasing the leader had dwindled to four, as points leader Eric Crosby, first-night visitor Chaston Finckbone and visitor George Richards converged on Treviranus while staying close to Mindock’s trunklid.
At the end of the non-stop 12-lap, four-and-a-half-minute dogfight, Mindock came under the checkers only three-quarters of a second ahead of Finckbone, who was side-by-side with third-place Crosby and fourth-finishing Treviranus and just ahead of fifth-place Richards. The time difference from Finckbone to Richards was less than nine-tenths of a second.
Ashland’s Dalton Truchon landed in ABC’s Victory Lane for the second time in three weeks with a dominant performance after the Berglund Customs ABC Six-Cylinders feature for his 12th career win here.
Travis Swanson started from the front row and slipped around polestarter Jim Anderson for the early lead, while the rest of the 13-car field stayed within close reach of the leaders. Ninth-starting Cameron Bond, who has run impressively as of late, charged through openings in the pack quickly, and by lap 2 he was challenging Swanson for the lead. Bond took over when Swanson’s car failed him and he coasted to the pits on lap 3, just before Anderson and Mathew Rohlfing tangled in heavy traffic.
On the restart Truchon, who had started seventh, took a peek to the inside on Bond but couldn’t get by. Truchon tried again on the next lap and would have taken over at the point had it not been for debris on the track bringing out the second of the race’s two caution flags. Truchon tried one more time on the restart, and this time he succeeded in securing the lead, while Bond fought off threats from Roger Walker.
Over the remainder of the race Truchon escaped to a huge final winning margin of four-and-three-quarter seconds, while the youngster Bond held off the cagey veteran Walker for a career-best second-place finish. Just behind them Jakob Bond and Rohlfing completed the top five, and with car trouble relegating points leader Shane Basina to an eighth-place finish while all other title contenders finished in the top-five, the battle for the track championship tightened up significantly.
Complements again were many from drivers and fans regarding the preparation and condition of the smooth, sticky-fast three-eighths-mile red-clay oval, with most of the races’ fastest recorded laps coming within a half-second of each division’s track records, along with Stuart’s new mark in the Super Stock A-main.
The top three in each of the age groups for the kids’ bike races included: ages 5 and under – Nolan Oreskovich, Waylon Walberg and Ashton Groom; ages 6-8 – Camden Stadler, Isabel Groom and Brody McFadden; ages 9-11 – Kayden Hiatt, David Chatterton and Levi Gilles; and ages 12 and up – Kayden Cook, Reid, and Cole Marquard.
On Saturday, July 27, the ABC Raceway will induct its tenth class into its Hall of Fame, with that night’s program presented by Boomer’s Tavern of Ashland. An invitation-only pre-race luncheon will take place at Boomer’s, and the Class of 2024 will be presented during intermission of the race program at the track.
All five regular weekly classed will be in action, with the grandstand gates and pits opening at 5 pm, hot laps to start at 6:30, and the first green flag scheduled to drop at 7 pm.
The ABC Raceway is located 3-1/2 miles south of Ashland on State Highway 13 and one mile west on Butterworth Road. For raceday information call (715) 682-4990, log on to the track’s website, www.abcraceway.com, or check out its FaceBook page.
Results
Fuhrman Designs WISSOTA Modifieds
Feature: 1-10: Kevin Adams, Cameron; Brady Uotinen, Superior; Kennedy Swan, Chippewa Falls; Nick Oreskovich, Mason; Mike Anderson, Jim Falls; Jeff Spacek, Phillips; Jake Hiatt, Mason; Andrew Mackey, Duluth, MN; Cole Spacek, Phillips; Pat Cook, Washburn.
11-15: Justin Weinberger, Elk Mound; Evan Checkalski, Duluth, MN; John Kallas, Hurley; Marcus Dunbar, Marenisco, MI; Brandon Copp, Brule.
Heat 1: Uotinen; Adams; Mackey; Copp; C Spacek; Oreskovich; Kallas; Anderson.
Heat 2: Swan; Dunbar; J Spacek; Hiatt; Weinberger; Cook; Checkalski.
Superior Floral WISSOTA Super Stocks
Feature: 1-10: Curt Myers, Cameron; Shawn McFadden, Ashland; Steve Stuart, Ashland; Patrick Beeksma, Ironwood, MI; Matt Deragon, Ashland; Myron Basina, Bayfield; Don Livingston, Washburn; Andrew Groom, Neebing, ON; Jason Melton, Rhinelander; Jake Nevala, Ashland.
Heat 1: Stuart; Myers; Livingston; Basina; Groom; Melton.
Heat 2: McFadden; Deragon; Beeksma; Trenton Bond, Iron River; Nevala.
Lightning Storm Graphics WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds
Feature: 1-10: Evan Checkalski, Duluth, MN; Marcus Dunbar, Marenisco, MI; Cory Jorgensen, Duluth, MN; Jesse Polson, Superior; Paul Suzik, Ironwood, MI; Paul Ripley, Duluth, MN; Jimmy Latvala, Solon Springs; Ryan Barningham, Bayfield; Bryan Lund, Ashland; Judd Skubal, Rhinelander.
11-13: Tanner Hicks, Ashland; Cody Carlson, Superior; Ryan Young, Hayward.
Heat 1: Dunbar; Latvala; Jorgensen; Checkalski; Lund; Ripley.
Heat 2: Barningham; Polson; Carlson; Hicks; Suzik.
Patsy’s Bar & Grill WISSOTA Pure Stocks
Feature: 1-10: Brent Mindock, Prentice; Chaston Finckbone, Grand Rapids, MN; Eric Crosby, Amery; Tom Treviranus, Hawthorne; George Richards, Mondovi; Aaron Bernick, Duluth, MN; Shane Basina, Bayfield; Rob Christman, Superior; Zene Anderson, Superior; Anthony Schultz, Stillwater, MN.
Heat 1: Finckbone; Crosby; Bernick; Basina; Schultz; RJ Holly, Marengo.
Heat 2: Mindock; Richards; Anderson; Treviranus; Christman.
Berglund Customs ABC Six-Cylinders
Feature: 1-10: Dalton Truchon, Ashland; Cameron Bond, Mason; Roger Walker, Phillips; Jakob Bond, Mason; Mathew Rohlfing, Cable; Alex Bond, Iron River; Jim Anderson, Cable; Shane Basina, Bayfield; Justin Pratt, Glidden; Mady Anderson, Mason.
11: Travis Swanson, Ashland.
Heat 1: J Bond; Basina; Truchon; Walker; C Bond; Pratt.
Heat 2: Swanson; J Anderson; Rohlfing; A Bond; M Anderson.