Big Money for Mid-Mods at ABC Saturday
by Nick Gima
Ashland, WI, August 5 – On Saturday night, the ABC Raceway will try once again to host a big-money show for area WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds.
The 15th annual “Mid-Mod Madness” special will be presented by the Lake Shore Café of Ashland and will pay $1,500 to the winner of Saturday’s Midwest Mod feature, thanks to a significant donation to that division’s purse from Zielies Tree Service. Due to the fact that a couple of nearby Saturday-night race tracks will not be hosting programs, a large number of racers are expected to visit the three-eighths-mile northern Wisconsin speedplant.
The event was initially set to be part of a three-race series spread out over the course of the summer schedule at ABC. But the coronavirus pandemic and recent bad weather have double-teamed to hamstring the first two attempts to get the series started, so the effort has been condensed into a single night of racing.
All six of the Raceway’s regular weekly division will be in action, and with a suddenly limited amount of possible shows now remaining in 2020, the battles for the points championships should become quite thrilling. In the WISSOTA Modifieds, for example, less than 100 points (not a significant amount under the current WISSOTA points system) separate the top eight in the standings, led by a tooth-and-nail battle between Cole Spacek of Phillips and Washburn’s Pat Cook.
In the WISSOTA Super Stocks only two points separate Dave Flynn of Superior and four-time defending track champ Nick Oreskovich of Mason, with the next four in the standings behind them all within less than 70 points of leader Flynn.
By comparison, Marcus Dunbar’s advantage of 37 points almost seems comfortable over Ashland’s Ross Fuhrman, as the second-generation driver from Marenisco, MI, aims to join his father Duane as an ABC Raceway champ.
In the WISSOTA Pure Stock class, rookie Tanner Gehl of Solon Springs used his first career feature win from two weeks ago to vault well ahead of defending division champ Randy Graham of Trego. But Graham, with the help of teammate and former two-time ABC Six-Cylinder champ Dale Coddington of Hayward, is pacing that division’s standings in the hope of a successful title defense there, albeit with Ashland pilots Forest Schultz and Dalton Truchon closing the gap a couple weeks back.
Another battle that is very much up-for-grabs is in the entry-level WISSOTA Hornets, where loyal long-distance traveler AJ House of Cloquet, MN, is trying to hold off a fierce late-season charge from DeJay Jarecki of Ashland.
The pit gates will open at 4:30 pm and the grandstands will be open at 5, with hot laps set for 6:15 and the first heat race of the night getting the green flag at 7 pm. Grandstand admission tickets are just $11 for adults, and kids ages 12 and under are admitted free when accompanied by a paying adult. Tickets are available either at the gate on race night or online via www.myracepass.com.
“Race Reports” will air on WBSZ, 93.3 FM, as well as online at www.wbszfm.com, from 4:30 until 6 pm with the latest news and weather information from the track.
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 the track’s FaceBook page.