By Jason D Searcy
August 27, 2016 – Elko, MN
August has been a very wet month in Minnesota, that trend continued on Saturday. Much of the planned practice was washed out in favor of track drying of the progressive banking at the 3/8th mile asphalt oval in Elko (MN). Luckily the rain stopped and the crowd rolled in for an exciting night of NASCAR Whelen All-American series racing during the Eve of Destruction presented by the MN Lottery at Elko Speedway.
Double 30 lap features were run in the premiere MN Corn Growers Super Late Model division, 60 laps of racing and not one yellow flag was displayed even though the action on the track was intense and the field of cars was as strong as any short track in the United States.
Chad Walen #52 took the early lead before Billy Mohn #8 grabbed the lead on lap 15, Chris Marek #3 then fought side by side with Mohn for the top spot with 10 laps to go, Marek finally established himself as the leader with three laps to go and held on by .685 seconds for the win.
“Me and Billy (Mohn) are good friends off the track, so when it came down to us two I was hoping we could race good and clean and be happy with whoever won,” said Marek. The win was good and clean and it was extra special for Marek because it was his first career Super Late Model win after a couple very close second place finishes recently. “I think we all are feeling like a winning team again and that helped a lot with our confidence and with the adjustments we are making,” said Marek.
Billy Mohn finished second, Chad Walen was third, #72 Jacob Goede finished fourth and #50 Steve Anderson finished fifth in this impressive field of 19 Super Late Models.
Joey Miller #15 from Lakeville (MN) won the second NASCAR feature. Miller took the lead early and never gave it up, he held back the many challenges of defending Super Late Model Champion Jacob Goede and won by .334 seconds. This was the fifth win of the season at Elko Speedway for Miller. Jacob Goede finished second followed by his brother #28 Matt Goede, Steve Anderson had another good run and finished fourth with Chris Marek coming across the line in fifth.
Jacob Goede held on to the lead in points, he now has a 28 point advantage over Miller in the race to the season Championship.
Some of the most accomplished Super Late Model drivers in the Nation raced at Elko on Saturday night. Roush-Fenway developmental driver Ty Majeski #91 from Seymore (WI) is the point leader in the ARCA Midwest Tour and has won 21 features already in 2016. “It’s always nice coming here, obviously a really nice facility and a cool atmosphere with lots of fans in the stands and as a driver you always like racing with that,” said Majeski. This was the first time that his team raced at Elko Speedway this year, so they bought four new tires and had to start in the back of both feature events, “We were off tonight, it probably wouldn’t have mattered if we would’ve started up there anyway” said Majeski “we were trying to R&D some stuff today, we didn’t get any practice which didn’t help, we made some gains on it from the first feature to the second so, we will come back again on September 17th.” Majeski finished 8th in the first feature and 10th in the second feature.
Cole Anderson from Northfield (MN) also made his first Elko Speedway starts of the season this weekend, he is a MN native but has been busy winning big Super Late Model races all over the Southern part of the Nation. He has scored five wins this year in places like New Smyrna Speedway (FL), South Alabama Speedway and Montgomery (AL) Speedway. Anderson blew a motor in his primary car on Friday so his crew put together the back up car and scored and 11th place finish in the first feature and a 12th place finish in the second feature.
Jeremy Wolff from Chaska (MN) won the Genz-Ryan Thunder Car main event, he fought off #48 Jeff Partington early in the race and then held the lead the rest of the 25 lap feature. Wolff admitted to watching his mirror as the battle behind him for second place was intense. Conrad Jorgenson #3 and Dillon Sellner #07 swapped the runner up position a few times and put on a good show for the fans. Wolff ended up winning by .395 seconds over Jorgenson for his fifth win of the season, Sellner finished third, #25 Eric Campbell fourth and Partington fifth.
Wolff increased his point lead over #99 Brent Kane who finished 8th, Wolff now has a 36 point lead over Kane and 46 point lead over Campbell in the race for his first Elko Championship.
An impressive field of 24 cars started the Pepsi Power Stock main event. Joey Prusak #6 from Minnetonka (MN) led every lap and took home his second trophy of 2016. Prusak had to hold off the strong charges of #62 Tom Doten after a late race restart, Prusak won by only .200 seconds at the stripe. As expected with a full field, the race was action packed with lots of bumping and pushing mid pack causing a few fast cars to finish poorly including former champion #88 Nick Oxborough who lost a tire and #54 Tim Hollen who finished 22nd. Doten finished second in the race #53 Tom Quade was third, #99 Dustin Mann finished fourth and #08 Michael Stoer crossed the finish line fifth, point leader #37 Bryce Blohm finished 6th.
With the runner up finish Tom Doten moved up to second in the point standings, he is now only 17 points behind Blohm and Brandon Petersen #7 is now in third after getting caught up in heavy traffic and finishing 9th, he is now 19 points out of the lead.
Tim Brockhouse #13 from Webster (MN) won his second consecutive Great North Legends feature at Elko Speedway. #14 Devyn Stocker lead the first few laps but Brockhouse passed him after the restart on lap 3, Brady Fox-Rhode then caught Brockhouse and pestered him the entire race. Fox-Rhode seemed to be faster than Brockhouse but could never get the run necessary to pass the veteran driver. Brockhouse has now won 24 features this year as he races all across the Northland on both asphalt and dirt in his Legends car. Point Leader Derek Lemke #71 finished third, #3 Dirk Henry was fourth and #16 Matt Allen rebounded from a crash in his heat race to finish fifth.
Lemke from Shakopee (MN) now has a 50 point lead over Allen in the race for the Great North Legends points championship.
Brandon Plekkenpol #55 from Shakopee (MN) won his first Hornets feature of the year at Elko Speedway. Plekkenpol watched all the action take place behind him, he won by .815 seconds over #7 Ridge Oien with #3 Michael Wachs Jr finishing third, #89 Michael Weiss fourth and #36 Brandon Olson finishing fifth. Point leader and defending Champion #14 Justin Schelitzche was caught up in an incident that dropped him back in the pack, he ended up finishing 8th.
Schelitzche now holds a slim 4 point lead over Brandon Olson in the race for the Hornets point Championship.
All results are not official at this time and are subject to change. Official results will be posted mid-week at ElkoSpeedway.com and on the ELKO racing app.
The large Eve of Destruction crowd at Elko Speedway was thrilled by the Steel Wall Bus Crash, Figure 8 Bus races, a Jet powered Golf Kart, Spectator Drags, a drifting exhibition and the popular Transaurus car eating robot dinosaur.
Coming up next at Elko Speedway is NASCAR Whelen All American series racing on Saturday September 3rd. Its Kids night, all Kids are admitted free, also bus rides around the track at 6:30pm. Gates open at 5pm, action at 6pm.
Get more information at ElkoSpeedway.com or call (952) 461-7223 or follow Elko Speedway on social media. Elko Speedway is located 30 minutes South of Downtown Minneapolis just off of I-35 and County Road 2 in Elko (MN).