With years of single digit car counts for dirt ump/imca type modifieds at florida events, the Southeast Dirt Modified Association has turned the situation around with only their second sponsored event with 24 dirt modifieds signed in at Lake City, Florida on Sunday November 26th. Cars were in attendance from all over the northern half of Florida to compete in the $1000 to win feature event. Lake City dirt track is a 3/8 mile oiled down surface making it very interesting for the drivers who regularly race on watered down dirt tracks to find the proper car setup. The promoter was so happy he added qualifying to the program and added a 6 lap, $100 to win fast car dash to the program for the top 6 qualifyers in addition to the already scheduled heats and feature. These top six locked in their starting positions in the feature by their finish in the fast car dash and did not then have to run a heat race. Marion Sizemore in the 2 car led qualifying, won the fast car dash and won the feature event. The feature had to be cut to 20 laps instead of the originally scheduled 30 laps due to darkness setting in and Sizemore was just getting pressure from the 14 car, Bobby Padgett as the two to go flags came out. The 14 car had worked his way up from 5th earlier in the event and was going to make the race real interesting when mother nature made it too dark for the race to safely continue. With the pure stock and street stock classes running longer than planned it shortened the $1000 to win modified event. The event purse payed $100 to start the feature.

Top five in the modified feature were: 1. Marion Sizemore $1000 2. Bobby Padgett $500 3. Paul Sizemore $300 4. Jimmy Singletary $225 5. Kenneth Owens $200

Watch Southeast Dirt Modified Association's web page at http://www.wwwp.com/mods for full Florida statewide dirt modified races being scheduled by Florida tracks during speedweeks, next years regular season weekly races as well as special feature events sponsored by the Southeast Dirt Modified Association. The association has decided to ask their members to make the newly remodeled Putnam County Speedway in Palatka, Florida their home track for weekly Friday night events next season. Saturday and Sunday events will be promoted as specials by the organizaion with plans to have 12 events during the season at several tracks and a special point fund for this series of events next season. Once sponsorship is found for the 2001 series of races the schedule will be announced.

for more information e-mail: mods@wwwp.com

By Gary Gross

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