Moyer Moves As Early Thaw Begins

CASA GRANDE, Ariz. — The Ernie Mincy Early Thaw honors the promoter who is credited with bringing Midwest racers to Arizona in January.   

He started the trend with the Early Thaw series when promoting the Central Arizona Raceway.

Don Shaw and Brad Whitfield organized this event last year with Thursday through Saturday races the last two weeks in January. 

Three of the five divisions are IMCA sanctioned while late models and limited modifieds use rules that allow different sanctions to compete. 

The car count for the opener was a large improvement over last year with 119 compared to 79 last year. 

Passing points in heats determined the who and where for A main lineups. 

Late models led the car count results with 35 with all but a few coming from the upper Midwest or Canada. 

A 26-car field for 25 laps comprised the late model A main. Tyler Peterson pulled away in a half of a lap, watched the yellow fly after two laps, and established his lead on the restart.

A long green-flag session meant traffic and Bricen James used the bottom of turn two to rocket down the backstretch to drive under Peterson to lead.

Then turn one was trouble for James and he slid off the bank, putting Peterson back in front.

Turn one continued to be trouble for drivers and Peterson joined the list. Once racing resumed for the final nine laps it was Billy Moyer Sr. holding off Ricky Weiss and Dustin Strand for the win.

IMCA modifieds had a duel between Tom Berry Jr. and Chaz Baca Jr. for several laps with Baca prevailing.  Berry used a crossover out of turn four to lead into turn one but slid off of the track and pitted.

Baca led the remaining laps to win over Jeff Larson and Ricky Alvarado. 

Stock car action was initially dominated by Aaron Olson but Bo Partain eventually made it a side by side race. Partain slipped a bit in turn two, fell back, but again caught Olson and raced more side by side.

A restart saw Trent Grager get past Partain and use turn three to overtake Olson. Grager led the last two laps to win and Partain drove past Olson on the backstretch of the last lap for second while Chris McCurdy when Olson was disqualified for illegal shocks.

Limited modifieds looked to be a win for Jake Smith but the last lap is the only one that matters.   

Lucas Rodin passed Smith on the backstretch on the final lap to be the driver doing the post-race interview. Smith was second ahead of Jory Berg.

Northern sport mods had Mark Martini in front for a dozen laps before Cam Reimers closed and took the lead on lap 13, using the bottom of turn three for a winning pass.

Martini was second and Taylor Huehl finished third. 

The event is being broadcast by SPEED SPORT affiliate IMCA.tv.