The Ironman Challenge recap is divided and this part covers the first four venues the tour visited.
This year was the first Evenson Law Office Ironman Challenge for Hobby Stocks and IMCA Modifieds. It’s a format that favors those taking the long view as there are 10 races over a 10-day period at five different venues.
According to Coordinator Steve Evenson getting tracks to host two-day events during the week was a challenge. But they did and the event started June 25th.
Ironman Challenge graphic.
Right away Winnemucca driver Cory Sample threw the gauntlet down and got wins at Tonopah and Hawthorne.
The runners up were James Thibodeaux and Wade Taylor at Tonopah.
Jeff Olschowka won the first night at the newly reopened Hawthorne Speedway while Taylor took the next round. Taylor was the runner up on Monday while Randy Artz took that spot in Tuesday’s event.
In the two Southern division Hobby Stocke events Shayna Robertson out scored Vaden to claim that Championship.
To help things along Evenson divided the Hobby Stock tour into a north and south division.
From there the tow was to Lovelock Speedway with racing on Wednesday and Thursday nights, closing out the month of June.
Once again Sample struck by winning the first night while Wade Taylor made an outside pass around five cars to win Thursday night’s IMCA main. This put him only a few points behind Sample when they headed for their tour’s next stop, Fernley 95A Speedway.
Zane DeVilbiss was the runner up the first night while on Thursday Sample was.
In the Hobby Stock division Vaden won the first night while Ausano was the runner up. Then on Thursday hitting a tire marking the inside of the track damaged his car while Auasno won the event.
Robertson was fifth the first night but fourth the second night pulling within just a couple of points of Vaden.
Then the tour moved to Fernley 95A Speedway for the first two days of July. It’s the biggest track on the tour and in the area.
The IMCA race had Sample moving through the pack while Randy Artz was running down leader Jeff Olschowka.
Some of the field was taken, including Robert Miller when several cars tangled in Turn 3. Up front Sample had caught the leaders and a late race restart would settle the contest.
Unfortunately Olschowka had mechanical problems and his slowing let Artz get a big lead on Sample, who tried but had to settle for the runner up spot.
Over in the Hobby Stocks the crew helping Vaden had taken the entire day to rebuild the front end of his car. Fortunately for him only three cars showed up for the race.
Goetz just ran away with the race while Vaden managed a second place finish ahead of Robinson. So they remained close in points.
When Saturday’s Hobby Stock ended Goetz once again scored a run away victory. This time there were more cars and Vaden was fourth while Robinson was several places behind him.
Over on the IMCA side Sample would score his 98th IMCA victory again besting Miller for the victory. And there was another crash that eliminated more cars.
After the stint in Fernley the tour moved to Fallon, which will be the subject for Part 2 of this recap. I’m attaching a gallery of some of the photos I didn’t use during my article about the racing at Fernley.
In the next part there will be a gallery and a video from the July 4th event.
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And not here is the photo gallery.
