Brown best again in chilly IMCA Frostbuster at Marshalltown

MARSHALLTOWN — Rough or smooth track, warm or cold, the early part of 2016 has been awful kind to State Center racer Kyle Brown.

Brown hasn't finished worse than second in four races in the state of Iowa so far in this young season, got his second straight IMCA Frostbuster win and third straight overall on Friday night at Marshalltown Speedway. He had to hold off his dad, David, and a hard-charging Josh Gilman, but Brown led all 25 laps en route to victory.

'If this is how it's how it's going to keep working out, I'll sure be OK with it,' Kyle Brown said through laughter in Victory Lane. 'I've never raced with my dad for the lead like that at the end of a race. He's probably the only one who's ever gotten in my head that bad. He showed his nose and I started second-guessing everything. That was pretty cool.

'I was really good in the holes and we could roll in the slick real well, too. I was just trying to roll and keep it consistent.'

Brown joked before the racing started Friday night that he wanted to keep himself in the headlines for winning races, and laughed when recalling that conversation in Victory Lane. His early-season dominance in his Harris Chassis — the company owned by he and his dad — continued, but with the added benefit, he said, of David running well on the same night.

'We had a good package at the end of last year, and the package we have now is what we're selling to our customers,' Brown said. 'I've been lucky to start up front in the features. … We've just got our stuff together from last year, and it's been good. We're trying not to make mistakes, no mechanical failures. We're keeping our head down and winning races.'

Brown and all the other drivers who ended up in tech throughout the night also remarked about how cold they were getting out of the car. At last year's IMCA Frostbuster event at Marshalltown Speedway, temperatures hovered in the high-40s. It was chilly, but not unbearable for several hundred racecars and race fans.

One year later, the 'Frostbuster' nickname once again lived up to its billing — except maybe for the fact that there wasn't much busting to it. Fans and racers braved temperatures that dipped as low as 28 degrees (with a wind chill of 18 degrees) for the first IMCA racing in two weeks.

Marshalltown Speedway promoter Toby Kruse took the risk to run the race when nearly every other track in the Midwest that had races scheduled for Friday night — including the IMCA Deery Brothers Summer Series opener at Davenport Speedway — canceled because of the cold.

It was a risk worth taking, Kruse said.

'This was probably one of the hardest decisions I've had to make as a promoter, because you look at the forecast and you knew it was going to be horrible. But everybody's amped up; they're ready to race,' Kruse said. 'The racers wanted to come. That shows, like everybody's been telling me, I made the right decision. I wasn't happy earlier today — I questioned myself — but I'm happy now.'

A total of 120 racecars were entered in Friday night's Frostbuster — a number Kruse was thrilled about given the weather.

The crowd wasn't huge, as Kruse expected, but the few hundred who did stick out the windy, cold weather were treated to close racing throughout the main events. IMCA Sport Mod winner Randy Roberts and runner-up Sam Wieben raced back and forth for the win. Donavon Smith edged out Chelsea's Damon Murty, who led all but the final lap, to win IMCA Stock Car. And in IMCA Hobby Stock, Dustin Elliott held on by a bumper to beat Eric Stanton — in a loner car after his big wreck at Southern Iowa Speedway — and Oelwein's Benji Irvine, who finished third.

Brown said the most important part about racing on a cold night for the guys on the Hoosiers (Hobby Stocks run on street radials) is to keep heat in the tires.

How they're cut and grinded down, and how the driver keeps them warm under caution, is a critical factor.

'Tires are huge in this deal,' Brown said. 'Guys that are cutting our tires right — I think that showed with both Dad and I running well — if you're cutting your tires right, and you're keeping the heat in them the way you need to, that's where it's at.'

Irvine said the cold doesn't change everything about race prep at the track, but it does require staying vigilant about keeping heat in the engines so they're at top performance.

And while tuning the car itself wasn't a ton different, climbing out after sure did. Irvine and Stanton remarked in tech they couldn't even feel their fingers.

'My fingers are numb right now, that's for sure,' Irvine said through a laugh. 'I'd obviously rather race when it's warmer out, but it wasn't that bad. I'm glad we raced tonight. As long as you're smart about making the changes to your equipment you need to, keep heat in it all night to keep it warm, it's all right. It's just cold once you get out there.

'It's like a just-got-done snowmobiling with no gloves on.'

That sentiment was the bet Kruse made, and it's the one that worked out.

Every driver who was asked Friday night — Brown included — said some variation of, 'We're all crazy,' for racing in the cold temperatures, but they all came out anyway.

Racers go race, Kruse said, and that's why he went through with the Frostbuster — which had already been rescheduled once due to weather.

'At the end of the day, I wanted to go race. I'm a race fan too. I wish it was warmer, but this gives us a night at the racetrack,' Kruse said. 'Everybody has told me they're happy they're here. You look around, there's not one person here that had a gun held to their head. They made the choice to come tonight, and I thanked them for that because it is a miserably cold night.'

IMCA FROSTBUSTER RESULTS

IMCA Modified

1. 21K Kyle Brown; 2. 83G Josh Gilman; 3. 21 David Brown; 4. 4TW Tim Ward; 5. 10K Ronn Lauritzen; 6. 5R Tad Reutezl; 7. 81D Scott Davis; 8. 10C Cayden Carter; 9. 20RT Ricky Thorton Jr; 10. 71C Troy Cordes.

IMCA Stock Car

1. 35 Donavon Smith; 2. 99D Damon Murty; 3. 94 Steve Meyer; 4. 5A Tyler Pickett; 5. 19J Jay Schmidt; 6. 2N Donavon Nunnikhoven; 7. 22D Jared Daggett; 8. 3 Scooter Dulin; 9. 50X Kevin Balmer; 10. 4JR  Russel Damme.

IMCA Hobby Stock

1. 19D Dustin Elliott; 2. 7B Eric Stanton; 3. 79 Benji Irvine; 4. 77 Derek Hodges; 5. 4W John Watson; 6. 500 Garrett Eilander; 7. 45 Justin Wacha; 8. 166 Justin Lighty; 9. 83 Eugene Nicklas; 10. 7X Dustin Graham.

IMCA SportMod

1. 3R Randy Roberts; 2. 198 Sam Wieben; 3. 3T Tyler Soppe; 4. 7 Carter VanDenBerg; 5. 82 Jake McBirnie; 6. 64 Zach McKinnon; 7. 8R Chase Rudolf; 8. 89JR Johnathan Logue; 9. 6A Adam Armstrong; 10. K3 Kyle Olson.

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