Well, time to fire up the keyboard, shake off a little of that winter rust, and ring in the new season with the Shadow Report!

Mother Nature was the main contender tonight. Driving to the Speedway about 5:45 today saw us driving into black clouds and hailstones, somewhat reminiscent of the first few weeks of the 2009 season, but the sun shone through and the track had dried up enough by about 8:30 to go racing.

Demar Aggregates Trucks

Heat 1 saw the debut of some new faces in the Truck Division, namely the 39 of Brady Smith, and the 43 of Shawn Potvin. We also saw the debut of Shae Gemmel's new Earnhardt black livery.

Heat 1 was a spirited affar that basically came down to 01-Bloemendal holding off a determined 56-Showler. It went thus till the last lap when 5-Sloetjes went up in a plume of smoke rounding turn 1 to bring out a lengthy speedy dry caution. A Green white checker finish was in order, but strangely enough after taking the green, the guys seemed to think it was a one lap shootout. Sharpie threw the white flag, then it looked everyone slowed on the backstretch thinking the race was over, while the green was still out. Final was Bloemendal, Showler and Gemmel.

Heat 2 Saw the debut of 55-Adriaensen's new all-white livery, as well as a couple more new guys: 14-Riddel, 7-Blauuboer and 25-Findlay (Tyler Findlay I believe is the same guy that racked up his modified so bad in Turn 3 a couple of years ago) Final was 93-Koricina, 16-Rijnen, and Adriaensen (I hope to frick I'm spelling it right this time  🙂 )

Truck Feature sees the early order shake out to Bloemendal, Rijnen and Showler running nose tail, with Koricina in pouncing distance, then Adriaensen, 17-Brydges and 77-Zagarody (This year sporting black with green, instead of green with black)

Bloemendal is in front, but getting pushed hard by Rijnen. Theres some rubbing and some pass attempts, but Rijnen is handcuffed because Showler is just waiting for him to push too hard. Rijnen and Showler have their hands full with each other, by lap 10 its allowed Bloemendal to get ahead sllightly. At the moment the battle of the race is actually for 5th spot between Zag and Adriaensen, which Zagarody gets the better of this time around. Lots of contact there.

Now at lap 19, Showler is pouring it on to get around Rijnen, going outside and running him side by side. This lets Bloemendal get a little further out, and also allows Koricina up into the fray for a 3 way fight for 2nd. Showler can't muster enough to get around Rijnen, and in the end the final is Bloemndal for the win, then Rijnen, Showler, Koricina and Zagarody.

This was the race of the night with multiple little wars going on all through the field.
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The New and Improved Dynamic Fluids Super Stocks

Well some of the new cars looked pretty sweet for sure. 14-Fitzpatrick was there, as was 33-Fothergill, 44-Showler (it sorta looked like a sister car to the 14), as well as 17-Ken McNichol all sporting next gen Super Stock bodies. (IMO Fothergill's red and white scheme is still the sharpest looking one out there though.)

We also saw the return of 3-Perkins! 🙂

Sadly, 24-Richmond is no longer running a super stock, but he'll be campaigning his MRA Modified again soon. Having trouble was 78-Jo Lawrence, who was out for practice but had some sort of failure that kept his car out of the festivities for the evening. Also notably absent was 60-Ott

Some business kept me away from the 1st heat, but Fitzpatrick pretty much had them covered.  

And in heat 2 it was 11-Lidster (Same color scheme but sporting a hideous flourescent pink number this year....for whatever reason) followed by 77-Lake and 84-Smith.

The feature was actually a bit of a clinker, which is unusual for Super Stock. Fitzpatrick left em' all in the dust. Most of the race was Fitzpatrick with a full straight on Fothergill,  who had about a quarter lap on everyone else. The race was really for 3rd, between Lidster, Lake and Smith, who put on a pretty good show. At one point Lidster led the trio, then Smith muscled past him. Then Lidster muscled back past Smith, brigning Lake with him this time. Final was Fitz, then Fothergill, Lidster, Lake and Smith.

I didn't get to the pits tonight, but as I was leaving, the word going around was that they were going over Fitzpatrick's car inch by inch. I have no idea what the final cal was.
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FT Garage Late Models

Heat 1 saw the return of a few of the regular Delaware suspects. Jesse Kennedy is back to his classic orange and blue scheme, and Jay Doerr's car is a super sharp looking spin on AJ Allmendinger's Sprint Cup livery...complete with the Petty 43. Very nice.

Also interesting was Matt Robblee piloting the Grogan 28 car tonight instead of Steve.

When the green flag dropped it was 81-Gresel in front with Kennedy and Doerr side by side for 2nd. Gresel held on, never getting too far from the 2nd and 3rd runners. At the end, it looked like Kennedy had a failure of some type that slowed him down, leading to some contact between Doerr and Lindsay behind him. In the end it was Gresel, wirth Kennedy limping in for 2nd, then Doerr.

Heat 2 saw the debut of the new 22 Jamie Cox, and the welcome return of 10x Gord Shepherd and 69-Lloyd Rawlings. Cox took the heat, followed by Shepherd and 72-Thompson.

When the green flew for the feature, Gresel jumped out front and stayed there. Kennedy was a strong second, apparently recovered from whetever happened in his heat. Then it was Doerr, Lindsay, Cox and Thompson. Back a little further, 5-Christie and 2-Stewart are waging some sort of war of their own, with lots of contact. This ends on lap 13 when Stewart sends Christie for a loop in turn 1 to bring out the caution. (don't know what the deal was there)

When green flew again, it looked like Kennedy had something for Gresel and started to pull him in. Jamie Cox demonstrated why he was so good in his modified, picking an outside lane to race Lindsay for 4th and staying there for a lot of laps before finally drifting back.

Unfortunately Mother Nature brough the festivities crashing to a halt at lap 20 with rain coming in turn 3. (At least they got it in time to avoid a potential rain wreck like in that truck race a couple years ago) At this point they threw the checkers, with Gresel bringing it home, Kennedy 2nd, Doerr 3rd, Lindsay 4th and 27-Box 5th.
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Final Thoughts

Just want to tip my hat to the fans that showed up tonight! Weather was looking pretty ugly right up till race time, but we managed to get some racing in after a long winter.

Also great to see truckracer, LMFAN, Ernie, Crazylady, Vicky and a few other of the CRO faithful. (DB1 - I couldn't find ya!) Derek's loaded and ready for the Lucas Sportsman series to fire up.

Sorry I missed you guys in the pits. Stuff kept me from heading down before, and afterward it looked like everyone was in a hurry to split, so I didn't bother.

Congrats to the Delaware crew on getting the first one down, and kudos to Melora and Shane for holding down the new Delaware Kid's Club. If you didn't know, the Kids Club meets in that little picket fence thingy back behind the announce tower. Tonight they had the kids making Mother's Day cards, and there's stuff planned all season for the club....apparently some driver meet and greets later in the season too. So if you have little ones, check it out. Its cool.

On the racing....I'm not sure what I think of the fast guys to the front format. If you didn't know, now they pretty much take the heat race finishing order....that's your feature field. (So the feature pole goes to heat winner one, outside pole goes to heat winner two, and so on down the line.) It might save some wrecking, but I'm not convinced that "fast guys in the middle" was the reason for a lot of it. My own opinion is if you actually black flag the guys when they're being boneheads, then it'll sort itself out.

I don't think it was a stellar first try for the format....but we'll give it some time before passing judgement. (I don't think any handicapping system would have kept Fitzpatrick from dusting everyone tonight. And Gresel wasn't THAT far ahead.)

Other than that, It was great to get out to the track and see some racing!   ;D

Shadow out