Sports

Points titles come down to the wire

By Tyler Ohmann

08/21/2012

Championship night at Thunder Mountain Speedway was all it was cracked up to be.

Especially in the sport stock division where it came down to the final laps to crown a season champion.
Steve Beckedahl, of Landa, captured the honor as he edged 2011 champion Erik Blada to win his very first season points title.

“I’ve been second three years in a row,” Beckedahl said. “This is my first win, and I’m very happy about it.”

“It came to a race to the end,” Beckedahl said. “He won many features this year, and I never won any, but it was nice that I got him on one this year.”

Beckedahl said that he works closely with Blada, so it was nice to beat him out for once.

“It was a nice feeling,” Beckedahl said. “We had a good year, and so has Blada, and we help each other out away from the track, and that is what racing about.”

He plans on racing again next year, and hopefully, making it two in a row at the top.

“I’m going to keep racing, spend more time on the car, I have a family that backs me with it, and I’ll drive for another year,” Beckedahl said.

Beckedahl captured a checkered in his heat race, and then finished fourth in the feature, which gave him a narrow two-point win over Blada.

Also having a good day was Bottineau’s Chris Romfo, who took home a trifecta of wins in the heat race, trophy dash and 20 lap feature race.
Cody Smith had three second place finishes. Blada finished third in his heat race with Beckedahl and third in the feature.

In the Wissota Midwest Modified division it was Jim Morlock taking the season title, as he extended his point lead to 15 points and won a track championship after not racing in Bottineau in 2011.

“It was very nice,” Morlock said. “It was nice to be back here. I took last year off and went over to Fargo instead, and they switched nights on us (in Fargo), so I figured I’d come back up to Bottineau again, try and make some money.”

Morlock said his success this season didn’t come easy it was a bit up and down.

“It was a little bit of trial an error,” Morlock said. “I tried a few things that worked, and I tried a few things that didn’t work. I had some off nights, but I had some on nights too.”

His season title almost didn’t happen.

With four laps remaining in the modified’s feature race, the field believed that the race was going to restart after a caution, but the flagman had other ideas and called the restart off. This caused a several-car pile up, in which Morlock was involved.

“I was a little upset, my car wasn’t real good tonight to begin with,” Morlock said. “Then I got punted in that little pileup and broke some suspension parts that are pretty key pieces, and the car didn’t work after that.”

Morlock didn’t give up, knowing that the points were on the line, and finished in eighth place.

“I knew I had to finish in order to tie up the points, so I did,” Morlock said.

Ray Smith finished in second place in points, and Norm Reitan of Bottineau took third.

Grant Hall, who was in Bottineau for only the third time this season, won the feature race, narrowly defeating Jeff Hooker and Jason Laducer. Ryan Schroeder dominated the second heat race, winning by more than half a lap.

The season is over, but TMS has one more event this year. The annual 80s and newer demo derby will take place at 4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 8 at a new venue, the Bottineau County Fairgrounds.