Adams earns seventh WISSOTA 100 Championship! By Kirk Holmes All The Dirt! Racing News HURON, SD (September 17) - A door opened Saturday night at Dakota State Fair Speedway, Kevin “Buzzy” Adams went through it and later passed through the gate and into victory lane where he accepted his third straight Speedway Motors WISSOTA 100 Modified championship trophy. The door, figuratively speaking, was the wide expanse at the top of turn two following a lap seven restart. Dave Mass of Isanti had been running (away) in the top groove prior to the caution for debris, but opted to take a lower route through the first set of turns after restarting with northwest Wisconsin natives Adams of Cameron and Mike Anderson of Colfax close behind. Adams stormed into the lead and never trailed en route to a record seventh WISSOTA 100 championship. Mass eventually faded back to a seventh place finish during the race, which was slowed by six cautions but highlighted by several drivers who made furious charges toward the front. It all started with Adams’ dash into the lead. “Davey was pretty good at the start so I didn’t know what he was going to do,” Adams said while describing the restart. “He’s only been racing the Mod for a little bit, so I don’t know. I’ve been in his shoes before, so I just got lucky I think. If he would have gone high, who knows what the outcome would have been.” Adams was the winner of both his heat race on Wednesday night (when the apparent winner was disqualified for not scaling) and the first qualifying feature to earn the pole for Saturday’s 35-lap main event. Anderson was awarded second to Adams in the qualifying feature and lined up third, to the right of Mass, who won the second qualifying feature. The second row consisted of talented rookie Dan Ebert of Lake Shore, MN, Cody Skytland of Fargo, ND and Brett Hoium of Villard, MN, all very fast throughout the four-day event. There were others, however, much deeper in the field who gave the fans plenty to cheer about throughout the contest. Earlier in the night, six drivers qualified for rows nine and 10 in the 33-car field in the Last Chance Race. Prior to that, three drivers were chosen from the field that failed to make the LCR and Ben Mickelson of Jamestown, ND, Jerry Esler of Motley, MN and Tyler McDonald of Huron made up the 11th and final row. When the competitors accepted the green flag from on-track starter Terry Voeltz, Mass motored through the first set of turns and emerged on the backstretch with the lead. Adams, Anderson, Sktyland and eighth starter Nate Heinrich of Bellingham, MN made up the top five followed by Ebert, Hoium and 11th starter Terry Engebretson of Cyrus, MN in a tight pack. Mass gained some separation from Adams and Anderson was a ways back in third. By lap seven, 14th starter Dave Cain of Corcoran, MN was running eighth after passing Engebretson. That’s when the caution came out for debris in turn three. Following the fateful restart, Mass ran a solid second with Anderson, Skytland and Heinrich poised to steal a position until Cain swiped fifth from Heinrich on lap 13. Kelly Estey of Kelly Lake, MN, lined up 20th and was up to 10th by that time; he continued to work hard and later cracked the top five. Two laps before a caution on lap 17 for an infield barrel that got punted onto the track in turn one, Adams was dominant at the point. Mass remained second when Anderson lost third to Cain. After the lap 17 restart, however, Anderson reclaimed third, but he lost it two laps later when Skytland put the “Dirt Digger” Anderson and Cain back to fourth and fifth, respectively. The top three were modestly spread out by lap 25 when Adams caught the back of the field. But just when things were about the get interesting, Anderson’s #57 came to a halt in turn four with a flat right rear tire. The yellow lights came on with Adams leading top 10 runners Mass, Skytland, Cain, 13th starter Travis Saurer of Elizabeth, MN, Estey, Ebert, Mike Stearns of Hecla, SD, 21st starter Andy Gordon of Murdock, MN and Hoium. Aberdeen’s Kent Arment, who blew a motor earlier in the week and qualified for the main event via the Last Chance Race, was running 11th after starting 28th. Just past the 30-lap mark, however, the man with 509 career feature wins headed to the pits with a mechanical breakdown. Following Anderson’s untimely flat, Mass got caught up high in turn two after the restart and emerged third behind Skytland when Zach Schultz of Grove City, MN spun in turn three on lap 26. Adams and Skytland both ran the very top groove of the track after the ensuing restart, and both made serious but non-lethal contact with the wall in turns three and four on lap 27. During the next lap, several cars got together and Ryan Aho of Chisholm, MN ended up hanging upside down in the cockpit of his #71A in the pit entrance in turn three. Anderson, Chad Olsen of Hendricks, MN and Aho were done for the night. Adams led Skytland, Cain, Estey, Saurer and Mass for three more laps before Arment’s breakdown on lap 31 caused the race’s final caution. Saurer had reclaimed fourth from Estey by that time, and managed to hold him off from that point to the finish behind Adams, Skytland and Cain. Gordon, Mass, Eischens, Stearns and Hoium completed the top 10. “I’d like to thank the staff here for preparing a pretty neat race track,” Adams added in victory lane. The runner-up finish for Skytland culminated a long week that started with a damaged race car after several run-ins with the turns three and four wall when he lost the lead and eventually finished third behind Adams and Anderson in Wednesday’s qualifying feature. “We had a pretty good year,” Skytland said in victory lane. “We started the year off hot and they started calling me the bottom feeder. We decided to change that idea. I like it up there. It’s fun, but it’s dangerous. “(Fixing the car) was about a six-hour, four-guy thing. My guys take care of me pretty good. Thanks, guys, this is awesome.” Cain, the current runner-up in national points to Adams, echoed the sentiment that the extra work turned in by the crew at Dakota State Fair Speedway set the stage for a great race - and a clean race. “It was a lot of fun,” Cain said during his post-race interview. “The track was great. I’m glad they farmed it. “I didn’t put a slide job on (Skytland), and I hope he remembers that. I hope from now on we race each other pretty clean.” The 20-car Last Chance Race earlier in the evening on Saturday was anything but clean during the first half of the 20-lap affair. Scott Hansen of Garden City, SD jumped off the outside of the front row and led the first lap before Jake Wildman of Glenwood, MN went around in turn four and Arment went to the rear for putting him there. With one lap in the books, Aho lined up third but dove to the bottom of the first set of turns and assumed the role of leader with Hansen a distant second after a couple of laps until Schultz slipped by on lap five. Arment, meanwhile, was up to eighth by that time. A caution for Curt Lund’s solo spin on lap seven and another for debris one lap later exhausted the opportunities for the drivers to get some rest. Schultz secured the lead following the lap seven restart and quickly pulled away after the next re-do en route to the win. The other five qualifiers for the feature were Aho, 14th starter Keith Tourville of Dairyland, WI, Arment, Wildman and Dustin Nelson of Ogilvie, MN. SUMMARY WISSOTA Modifieds: Feature - Kevin Adams, Cody Skytland, Dave Cain, Travis Saurer, Kelly Estey, Andy Gordon, Dave Mass, Don Eischens, Mike Stearns, Brett Hoium, Dan Ebert, Jordan Foster, Curt Gelling, Darian Boyce, Tyler Limoges, Zach Schultz, Aaron Holtan, Dustin Nelson, Nathan Heinrich, Tyler McDonald, Kent Arment, Ryan Aho, Chad Olsen, Mike Anderson, Jake Wildman, Terry Engebretson, Keith Tourville, Justin Jones, Blake Jegtvig, Ben Mickelson, Scott Ward, Shane Sabraski, Jerry Esler Last Chance Race - Schultz, Aho, Tourville, Arment, Wildman, Nelson, Kyle Koehntop, Dave Schroeder, Curt Lund, Reed Storley, Scott Tofte, David Orr, Randy Tarno, Scott Hansen, D.J. Tesch, Chris Prussman, Ryan Engels, Randy Klein, Cody Ahrendt, Scot Danzeisen