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Cedar Rapids, Iowa 52401
Track alteration a hit on Hawkeye Downs opening night
Austin Slabaugh among winners as 2024 points auto races kick off
CEDAR RAPIDS — One week in and the change appears to be a hit.
Hawkeye Downs Speedway opened its 99th year of racing Friday night with the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series and it was easy to identify the new rubber bumpers, striped in yellow and black, along both sides of the quarter-mile asphalt oval.
The addition trimmed a few feet off the inside lane of the racing surface, eliminated the racing groove closest to the infield grass and reshaped the track less like a circle and more into a true oval. The hope was to set up situations where two drivers could jockey for position side by side rather than having a long string of cars racing single file.
“The car felt better than I thought it would,” said Kalona’s Austin Slabaugh, who won the Legends Division feature race. “It was a little bit of an adjustment to get used to and it actually seemed like there was a little bit of an outside groove, so that helped. Created more passing and stuff like that. It felt like it was a lot better racing rather than just going bumper to bumper.”
Slabaugh — winner of the Legends Division points title in 2017, 2021 and 2022 — had not viewed nor tested Downs’ track modification before Friday, but made some adjustments to his No. 6 car in anticipation.
“We changed the gear in the car,” Slabaugh said. “The gear we were using before, it seemed like it was hitting the chip and you were kind of losing power there coming into the corners, so we changed that out and that seemed to help quite a bit.”
Patrick Flannagan of Cedar Rapids — the four-time defending points champion in the Sport Mods — followed up his nine feature wins in 2023 with another checkered flag on opening night.
“I don’t mind,” Flannagan said of the track alteration. “I think it gets the people off the bottom so they can race a little bit more.”
The Hornets Division had a dozen drivers in its feature race. After a runner-up points finish last year that included a bevy of top-5 placements with just one win, Cedar Rapids’ Chad Vozenilek got his 2024 season off to a rousing start with a victory.
“I was a fan of running the low groove but, hey, I made it work,” Vozenilek said. “We kind of played around with both lines during practice and I think it's a good thing.”
Adam Petrzelka closed the night with a comfortable Hobby Stocks win, Todd Ness claimed the Sportsmans feature and Drew Nickell won the inaugural “HD Dawgs” race, which Downs Racing Director Brian Gibson terms a “run what you brung” event.
Weekly points racing will continue May 10, which will give drivers and fans another week to absorb and adjust to the new-look track.
“I'm telling you from a fan’s standpoint, racing was unbelievable,” Downs public-address announcer Jeff Selfridge said. “Nobody was in the grass. There were no rocks and stuff kicked up there. There were two distinct grooves and you could use both of them.”
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