NOTEBOOK: Frostbusters start strong, but washed out by week’s end

The annual IMCA Frostbuster Special, which opens up dirt racing competition at four Iowa race tracks, was finally able to run last week.

Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa, Marshalltown Speedway, Boone Speedway and Benton County Speedway in Vinton were all on the schedule to host the special events, paying out $1,000 to the IMCA Modifieds each night, $500 to the Stock Cars, $400 to Sport Mods and $250 to the Stock Cars.

On Thursday night, Jesse Sobbing got the special event started off with a win at Southern Iowa Speedway. Sobbing, who won IMCA's North Central Region Modified championship last year, started third and fought past Cayden Carter and Richie Gustin for the lead right before halfway. He negotiated lapped traffic well from there, taking home the win.

Carter - running two classes - pulled away following an early restart for the victory ahead of Damon Murty in Stock Cars, while Carter VanDenBerg took the Sport Mod win ahead of Jason McDaniel.

Shannon Anderson denied challenges by Dustin Griffiths and then Eric Stanton for the win in Hobby Stock.

Friday night saw a last lap pass for the win in the IMCA Modifieds and Stock Cars at Marshalltown Speedway.

Troy Cordes led most of the 30-lap main event, but couldn't shake those chasing him. Luke Wanninger went from fourth to the lead in the final seven laps, taking the win by passing Cordes on the final lap.

In the Stock Car main event, it was Brian Irvine who pulled off the last-lap pass for the victory, slipping past Jay Schmidt.

Cory Rose led 18 of the 20 laps for the win in Sport Mod, while Austin Luellen led flag to flag and won Marshalltown's Hobby Stock main event.

Boone's Frostbuster races got started on Saturday night, but two rain showers ended the night before the Modifieds, Stock Cars and Hobby Stocks were able to complete their main events. Kansas driver Ben Kates won the Sport Mod main event.

The final night of the season-opening Frostbuster at Benton County Speedway, set for Sunday, was a complete washout due to rain. Track officials said the event will not be made up, and that regular weekly racing will start this Sunday.

HAAS SHEDS LIGHT ON F1 PLANS

NASCAR team owner Gene Haas added some detail to his Formula One plans on Monday but left open whether he plans to enter next year or 2016.

Haas, whose proposed new team was accepted by the governing International Automobile Federation (FIA) last week, told a news conference he planned to compete under the Haas Formula banner.

The 61-year-old California-based multimillionaire said the team, which has yet to secure an engine partner, would have its main base in Kannapolis, North Carolina, with a satellite operation in Europe.

Guenther Steiner, who has previous Formula One experience as a former Jaguar and Red Bull technical director, will run the team which plans to use a third-party constructor.

INDYCAR UPDATES INDY 500 QUALIFYING

IndyCar announced Monday an addition to the practice schedule and further definition of the qualifying format for next month's 98th Running of the Indianapolis 500. The schedule change features an extra day of on-track activity with the addition of a Verizon IndyCar Series practice session on May 19.

In March, IndyCar announced an enhanced qualification format to increase the excitement level and on-track action during qualifications. The weekend will culminate on May 18 with the Fast Nine Shootout, which will determine the Indianapolis 500 pole position.

IndyCar also confirmed an update to the qualifying format that allows a competitor that suffers a hardship in qualifying at the conclusion of May 17's session an opportunity to make the starting field during Sunday qualifications. This revision would also let teams that want to bring new entries forward after qualifying on Saturday an opportunity to compete for a position in the race. In both cases, these teams would be restricted to the last row of the field.

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