Photo: Ryan Gillmore

The final event of the 2012 season at the Springfield Raceway was held Saturday night with the running of the KMJ Performance Turkey Bowl VI with over 150 race teams with 4 classes competing under a sunny November day as Kyle Beard and Terry Phillips took home the 2 main head-liners in the Late Model and A Modified features.

In the Late Model event, with the ever-growing talk about spoiler heights, Springfield co-owner Jerry Hoffman allowed defending event winner Jack Sullivan to make the call and Sullivan said no spoilers. In return the track offered and extra $500 to the feature winner making it a $2500 to win event along with offering a $100 bonus to the 1st 2 Late models in practice line with no spoilers. Jesse Stovall and Justin Wells took that challange and lined-up quickly as Late Models were given 2 sessions of practice for the adjustment.

After the redraw, former winner Justin Wells and Mid-south top runner Kyle Beard brought the field to the green flag with Wells grabbing the early lead with Beard, MARS Champion Jesse Stovall, Sullivan, and Terry Phillips in tow. Wells was starting to put some distance out front as the rest of the pack were side by side. Caution waved on lap 6 bunching the field together. On the restart, Beard and Stovall who had been back and fourth saw Beard take back second place as Phillips and Sullivan followed. With Wells leading, lap 15 would see things change as leader Wells jumped the cushion in turn 3 and gathered it back-up while Beard made his way to the leader board as Phillips, Stovall, and Sullivan all followed. The next lap caution flew as things got really tight in turn 3 as the leaders went through lapped traffic. During the caution, Stovall stopped on the frontstretch and asked the officials to look at his car. Under Springfield rules any car that stops during caution on their own goes to the rear. Stovall refused and went to the pits ending his night. With Beard in front , Phillips picked the top lane while Sullivan went down low. Beard quickly jumped to the extreme top groove as the youngster was riding the edge. Phillips and Sullivan went door to door with Sullivan getting around Phillips on lap 17. Sullivan started to gain ground on the bottom lane with Phillips staying top side. On lap 23, Phillips got around Sullivan and began to close-up on Beard as Wells moved around Sullivan to third place. In the closing 5 laps, Phillips got closer but couldn't make his way around Beard as Beard grabbed the victory with Phillips, Wells, Sullivan and Matt Johnson following. Beard and the GB Trucking team had made a last minute schedule change to compete at the Speedway after planning on going to another event in Tennessee. Bryan Allison captured the Wehrs Machine $500 Product Certificate for the Hard-Charger Award after advancing 9 spots in the 30 lap feature.15 of the 20 starters finished on the lead lap

The A Modified event brought 62 entries to the 'Quick-Quarter" battling for $1200 to win and $450 to start the feature event. With the redraw it placed defending event winner Terry Phillips and Central Missouri standout Dean Willie on the front row. The feature went green,white checkered for the 25 laps as Terry Phillips drove away with the victory as some great battles were behind the leader. In a touching moment on lap 4, fans and crews stood with 4 fingers in the air in the memory of Mike Clark. The soft-spoken gentleman who really took Dirt Works Race Cars to the high of Modified racing after 1991 and kept many racers on the track every week was honored. Performance Bodies of Iowa had donated $500 to the leader of lap 4 as that was Clark's old race number. The win for Phillips was worth $1700 including the bonus money as the Springfield standout grabbed his 3rd Turkey win. Following Phillips to the checkered flag was Willie, Jesse Stovall, Bobby Pearish and Jeff Labaube as 17 of the 20 starters finished on the lead lap.