Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
A big crowd, great weather and close competition provided a solid day of racing when the USSBA sprint boats made the second summer stop at Webb’s Slough in St. John. The race drew 30 boats on the program with the largest entry in the Super Modified class where 19 boats were on the bill.
Top finishers in the big class Saturday at the Slough were Cory Johnson and Gary McNiel of Maple Ridge, B.C., the only super mod boat to clock under 50 seconds on the tight slough course.
Johnson and McNiel are currently racing a boat which belonged to Donald Smith of St. John.
Johnson, who is a tugboat operator in weekdays, and McNiel put down a set of sub-50 seconds qualification runs on the tight slough course which required boats to run a combination of 30 links on the course. They then ran best times in the three elimination races which start with the top eight qualifiers and split off half the field in three rounds.
Colfax entrants Scott and Lori Ackerman, who averaged third fastest on the four qualification runs, landed in third place behind The Overkill boat of Dennis Hughes of Spokane and Matia Haskey of Aberdeen.
Ackerman said the season points race in the class between his boat and the Jolly Rogers team entry of Eric Werner of Wrangell, Alaska, and Jana Horton of DesMoines is still on for the last two stops on the race circuit. That’s because Johnson/McNiel, who dominated the class Saturday at the slough, have not made all the races to pile up the points.
Ackerman now figures they are 32 points back of the Werner /Horton.
The boats will race at Albany, Ore., Sept. 10 and then go to Port Angeles the following week for the national finals. The event awards double points. It will be the first race at the Port Angeles facility.
Werner/Horton booked the second fastest set in the four qualifying runs Saturday at the slough. That qualified them as second for the eliminations, and they had the second fasted time in the first elimination round, the eight cut, with a 53.853. Johnson McNiel blistered a 50.86 to stay ahead of the pack.
The day ended for Werner/Horton in the next round when they went out the channel and the boat slid on the grass all the way to fence on the golf course end of the slough.
Hughes and Haskey bested the Ackerman boat by more the two seconds in the same round to make the final race against Johnson/McNiel, but it was no contest: Johnson McNiel pegged another two-plus-seconds gap to take it.
Ackerman noted the times dropped off for most of the boats during the day because of silt buildup from the churning water. The mix of silt means the jet pumps on the boats need more power to push the mix and that taps some of the speed.
Past winners Dan Morrison and Cara McGuire of Port Angeles won the super boats. Their Wicked team boat clocked the fastest lap of the day at 47.655 on their third qualification run.
The super boats are an unlimited class with methanol fuel and supercharges on some of the boats. They deliver more power, but some of that can be excessive on the tight Webb water track.
“St. John is a drivers’ course, and all of the racers love it, but they can’t open those power boats up like they do on other places around the the circuit,” Ackerman noted.
The crowded super modified class limits power plants to 369 cubic inches. That leaves most entrants running Chevrolet 350 engines with aluminum heads and natural aspiration.
Doug Hendrickson of Pasco and Hannah Macke of Lewiston won the A-400 class with their fastest lap, a 50.38, in the last elim round. That just nudged the 50.9 posted by the top qualifiers, Kyle and Alex Patrick of Albany, Ore.
Those two times on the big board over the slough’s finish pond were the closest finish for the finals. The A-400 class had seven entrants.
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