Thoughts on the wingless show at Eagle

Well, the wingless sprints went off without a hitch at Eagle, despite the gloomy predictions after seeing flipping sprinters in practice sessions not one rollover took place, and only a few spins delayed the action.

It was an interesting experience but I can't say I'm ready for it to take a regular place on the calendar yet. We'll see if a few more locals are ready to go topless as I don't think Roger will be able to pull the outsiders for every show. Maybe I'm wrong.

I'm giving this experiment the benefit of the doubt but frankly I was bored by THAT show on THAT night. The modified feature was much more entertaining.

That said, it's a class in its infancy on a what was a changing track. The rain, and a new track definitely warranted the need for extra hot lap sessions. I remarked after the A feature, "now if they could run 'em again we may have something!" They seemed to be finally getting into the groove by then.

But there was a marked difference between the level of competition from top to bottom. On one hand you had Don Droud, Jr. who has experience in midgets and wingless competition versus a few who chose to run the bottom a la the late Kenny Beedle. There were motor differences as well.

As I've said before many times, it needs to be built before it becomes permanent. And once the novelty wears off it will have to stand on it's own merits such as quality of competition.

In the end, I still think it was a successful first outing and worth trying again. But I missed the winged cars on Saturday night.

However, some people (and if you read the message boards, the majority) were ecstatic over the wingless show. Others have predicted doom and gloom. One person told me that this is the way to see what the crowd would be like if the sprints weren't there.

A saying I like to use goes like this: "It is what it is." What does that mean? It means look at the situation objectively and don't make conclusions based on hype, fear, hysteria, etc. Look at the facts.

Simply put the wingless show was what it was; it was not the beginning of the end of the winged sprint class, nor was it the greatest show on 64 wheels.

It was a race on a Saturday night that didn't have a lot of bad things, had a few good things and everything went off well. That's all and that's all it really needed to be for the first time.