Cedar Rapids racing fans hoping Downs can build car counts, crowds

CEDAR RAPIDS - The salad days of racing have long passed at Hawkeye Downs. Large car counts and packed stands are no longer the norm.

But on opening night, hope springs eternal.

'I'm looking forward to it getting back to what it used to be,” Austin Black of Cedar Rapids said last night. 'It used to be big crowds. It would be nice if more people came out, I guess. Hopefully ...”

Attendance was, as one pressbox wag said, 'a typical May crowd.” The stands were about half full.

Black and his wife, Rachel, brought along sons Noah, 5, and Ian, 1. They were among the few young families on hand.

'We probably make it four or five times a year,” Austin said. 'We like to do things to get out and support the community. We go to RoughRiders games, Kernels games, this ... whatever we have time for.”

Jim Bell of Cedar Rapids has made time to attend races at Hawkeye Downs for nearly 50 years. He competed at the track and was on the pit crew of former late model racer Brad Loney when he ran in the ASA series.

'This is one of the nicer race tracks around,” Bell said. 'We ran a lot of crap tracks (in ASA).”

Bell said he was interested to see the car count and hopes it continues to grow. Last year's high count was about 70. There were 54 cars in five divisions last night. The low count was seven in hobby stocks; the high 17 in legends.

Last night's feature winners were Kurt Bohnsack (hornets), Nathan Ballard (hobby stock), Dave McCalla (sportsmen), Tim Plummer (late models) and Brady Fox-Rohde (legends). Plummer won after calling an infraction on himself midway through and going to the back of a crash-whittled, six-car field.

Bell said low car count contributes to low attendance.

'When you only have six cars in a heat race and six cars in a feature race, something's wrong,” he said.

Jim Cahalan of Cedar Rapids said Hawkeye Downs is a hidden gem that, perhaps, just needs to be polished.

'I moved to Cedar Rapids in 1994 (from Rochester, Minn.) and I've been coming out here ever since,” he said. 'I think this is kind of a lost thing that people don't really how good it is and how good it could be.”

Cahalan termed himself a NASCAR fan, 'but when I got here, I love this,” he said. 'I can come out here every Friday night. I can't go out to NASCAR every Friday night.

'To me, it's really good, it's clean and it's a family thing. I think more people need to take advantage of it.”