WEST SALEM — Tim Nelson admits he has an unusual habit of watching the Weather Channel, especially early in the morning. So when he watched the area forecast Thursday morning, he thought there was little chance of rain.

The forecasters were wrong, but that was all right with Nelson.
Nelson, you see, was leading the Oktoberfest Late Model Feature race when rain hit the La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway at 10:44 p.m. Track officials suspended the race, then ran another event n called the Double O n while hoping the rain would subside. It didn’t, and the Late Model race was officially ended 11:08 p.m. Thursday.

That meant Nelson was the race winner, giving him his first Late Model feature victory since the 1995 season.

“It goes as a ‘W” in the paper, right?” Nelson said, smiling. “We’ve had our share of bad luck, so it’s about time. I probably had a top five car, but I’ll take it.”

A five-car wreck on the first lap of the race knocked out the fast qualifier of the night, Todd Oliver, and sent John Towner, Kevin Eddy, Chris Skede and Tim Hagen into the pits. Nelson, who started on the outside of the front row and didn’t get a great start, wasn’t about to let it happen again.

“On the restart, I wasn’t about to miss that one,” Nelson said, loading his car onto his open trailer as the rain continued to come down late Thursday night. “It was fun to get out front. I saw the black car (Brad Powell) coming, and you know those blue cars (Dutch Mill Trucking team cars) will be coming.”

Powell was coming on strong, but Nelson had a sizeable lead over Powell, and nearly a straight-away lead over Carlson when the yellow flag came out. When the rain finally washed out the race, Nelson didn’t mind.

He didn’t mind that the forecast was off, and he definitely didn’t mind seeing his 13-year winless streak end.

“I’ll take it,” Nelson said.

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