By Randy Pospishil
NORFOLK, Neb. (June 22, 2024) – Interestingly, the feature races at Off Road Speedway’s regular program of racing on Saturday were anything but regular with an abundance of collisions, cautions and curious finishes.
There was, perhaps not coincidentally, a full moon looming in the hazy eastern sky.
Four attempts were necessary, for example, to begin the first feature of the evening, the IMCA Sunoco Stock Cars.
Polesitter Cole Rosencrans promptly took the lead, but Cameron Wilkinson, with five wins already this season, quickly became a contender by moving up from the fourth row into second place.
Within the first six laps, Tejay Mielke joined Rosencrans and Wilkinson in what soon became a three-car battle.
Wilkinson finally seized the lead coming out of turn four midway through the 18-lap race, while Mielke looked for chances to pass and Rosencrans remained a close third.
The opportunity presented itself briefly when the trio caught up to lapped traffic entering turn three. Wilkinson appeared trapped on the low side of the track but moved up to hinder Mielke’s attempted pass and maintained the lead as the cars exited turn four above the lapped car.
Mielke then used momentum from turn two to pull alongside Wilkinson on the backstretch and remained there as the cars rounded turns three and four and headed to the finish line.
As the pair approached the flag stand, Wilkinson’s engine blew, with Mielke securing the win by less than a car length, with Wilkinson maintaining second place ahead of Rosencrans who took third.
The unique circumstances continued in the IMCA Sunoco Late Model feature, where Cory Dumpert was assigned responsibility for causing a caution early in the race and was sent to the rear of the 19-car field on the restart.
Meanwhile, Alex Banks used his starting position on the pole to lead the initial eight laps of the 25-lap event but soon, during a caution and restart with 16 laps remaining, Dumpert had already made his way to Banks’ rear bumper.
Dumpert pulled alongside Banks coming out of turn two and within the next two laps had taken the lead. Banks held onto second place until being passed by Zach Zeitner three laps later.
By the time the feature’s fifth and final caution occurred, with seven laps remaining, only 10 of the initial 19 cars in the starting grid were still competing.
Dumpert and Zeitner continued to lead and finished in first and second, respectively, while Devin Johnson came out on top of a three-car battle with Banks and Beau Johnson to take third.
The top three finishers in the IMCA Sunoco Hobby Stock feature all came from starting positions among the back half of the eight rows that began the race.
Once again, the initial race leader, in this case Seth Steinmeyer, converted the position into the race lead for nearly the first half of the race, but Trevor Frisch passed Steinmeyer on the outside of turn two during the feature’s third caution to take the lead.
Five laps later, following the race’s fourth and last caution, Travis Landauer got inside position on Frisch exiting turn four and, by the time the two were leaving turn two, took over the lead.
Landauer held off Frisch as the pair finished in first and second place, respectively, with Nate Buck moving steadily through the pack to earn third.
James Roebuck grabbed his third Off Road Speedway Friesen Performance IMCA Northern SportMod win of the season as, once again, collisions and engine issues caused the feature field to dwindle.
Roebuck took the lead from Stephanie Reynolds three laps into the feature while Colby Langenberg and Kyle Wilkinson competed for second place behind him.
Wilkinson won that battle by catching Langenberg with nine laps remaining, then beginning a pass on the inside of turn two that concluded with his securing second place coming out of turn four at the end of the lap.
At race’s end, five laps later, Roebuck finished in first place with Wilkinson in second and Langenberg taking third.
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