According to Kepner they just recently did away with brackets and went to a strictly a heads-up format that attracts between 75 and 80 cars on race nights running four head-up only classes including a ten-wide class. I've talked to several street racers in the St. Louis area with eight- to nine-second street cars that run Benton every weekend instead of the local sanctioned tracks.

"I drive my car daily," one man said, " and it has a full cage and if I want to race locally I have to put a window net in. They don't have too many rules at Benton so I race there instead."  Another racer I talked to about the track said he really liked to race there because they got the program over at a reasonable hour and the management has on occasion treated every racer to a burger at the food stand. He also mentioned that the track sometimes has a wet T-shirt contest after the racing is over. 

Back on the highway and eight more miles down I-55 and we come to Sikeston Drag Strip. Now this is a very nice looking facility with concrete guard walls, a nice tower, paved pits and return roads and some nice grandstands. It is a very active eighth mile track with a regular schedule of booked in shows during the season. I know they've had Outlaw Pro Mods and Pro Stocks run there this year because we got the results here at the magazine. Local Nitro Coupe/Pro Mod racer Randy Merrick races there and has run some low, low four-second laps on the track with 40% nitro in the tank of his supercharged Pro Mod that has run in the six-ohs in the quarter-mile.

When you stand on the starting line you can see a farmer's house down the right hand lane with an attached carport. Local racers will tell you that more than one racer has parked his race car in that farmer's carport after running off the end of the track and had the farmer come out of the house with a shotgun and charge the racer a fee for parking.  Kepner swears to me that it has happened and who am I to doubt a legend or question one?