ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa – The annual Lyon County Fair meant a Tuesday night race at Rapid Speedway, but for Jack Dover it meant an opportunity to score a midweek win.
Dover raced to victory against a 27-car field of Midwest Sprint Touring Series winged 360 sprint cars at the three-eighths-mile dirt oval.
The program began with four draw heats, and passing and finishing points were used to align the main event, with no dash or B main as part of the evening.
Dover started from the pole and immediately established a substantial lead, hitting traffic by lap seven, when a yellow flew to create an open track on the restart.
Hometown driver Jody Rosenboom used the top line in turns one and two on the restart to jump from fourth to second, and a lap-15 yellow gave him an opportunity to test Dover.
But it was Terry McCarl that made some noise, when he dove under Rosenboom on the bottom of turn one to take second on lap 16. Further yellows put McCarl on Dover’s rear nerf bar for restarts, but each time Dover was able to pull away.
As the lap count closed on 25, the track took rubber to the point that it would take a Dover mistake to open the door for McCarl.
That did not happen, and Dover took the $2,000 winning check over McCarl in second and Kaleb Johnson in third. Eric Lutz crossed fourth, followed by Rosenboom.
Support action came from a dozen Tri-State Late Models and 14 USRA modifieds.
The late model main had an exciting finish, when Rock Rapids driver Nate Beyenhof used the bottom out of turn four to make his winning pass on the final turn, pushing race-long leader Jordan Heiman back to the runner-up spot.
The modified main was won by another Rock Rapids driver, Don Gerritsen Jr., who collected the win from the third starting spot.