March 29, 2011

By Ken Wagner

The first ever USAC/CRA event at Victorville went off well with cool weather, a full grandstand and 35 sprint cars racing on the nicely banked big quarter mile track. Promotions of the event preceded it on the internet and hopefully the fans will see it is a good place to go for CRA sprint car racing when the home track in Perris is dark. Mike Spencer waded thru the traveling heroes to claim his 2nd win of the year in two tries.

My pics this week click here to see. Mrs Wags pics Click here to see. Doug Allens work is here click here to view.

Mike was beat out of a heat win when Greg Bragg held him off earlier in the night after he qualified 4th in the field. It didn’t take him long to wade thru the pack and run around early leader Bill Rose from Indiana on lap 11. After clearing the lead, he pulled away as the battle for 2nd heated up. It was Mike’s 20th career CRA win, tying him with current driver Rickie Gaunt and others like J J Yeley, Paul Jones and Tony Simon for 25th on the all time leader board.

Speaking of Super Rickie, he had a good night as he ran it up to 2nd before a racing bump by David Cardey pushed him back on the podium into third. In front of the grandstands when they both stopped, the two had a little discussion as Rickie jumped up on his rear tire before David got out and they hopped down to continue the subject. That clip even made Wind Tunnel on Sunday night in the eye candy report. They were both calm in the interview, but it will make this week’s Perris edition interesting.

Bullet Blake Miller had the yellow beauty in 4th with a good run after timing in 2nd quick this week. He ran third in his heat and was ready to go in the main. Indiana native Bill Rose was in between Outlaw rainouts, and fresh from his non wing win in Chico last week, when he took the lead on the green flag start. His car was fast, but later he said too tight as he couldn’t hold off the local boys and ended up 5th.

Two spectacular crashes in hot laps started things off pretty rough for the competitors when first Danny Sheridan and then Seth Wilson went for high flying endo’s coming out of turn 3. They both launched from a nasty rut that everybody else missed and were at the mercy of rare air before coming down crunching on the mud. Danny walked away from his badly beat up race car while Seth needed a little help after his kneecap was shattered. He had surgery to repair on Tuesday after the crash.

Nick Faas was lookin’ good midway thru the race running the high groove just like the former driver of the Silver Bullet (AKA Tony “The Cowboy” Jones) until he met a spot he didn’t like on the track and almost balled it up running into the wall. He had to have a little work area madness before returning to run 12th at the end. Matt Mitchell also had a stop and returned from the back to 9th with a good run thru the back of the pack.

There were 5 barely Senior visitors from Ventura running tonight in their own class and I don’t remember who won. The number of 360’s competing with the 410’s had to be near 10 as they put on a good show and I think Brian Camarillo was the highest finisher, unless David Bezio was small motored too! They are looking for someone to put up $200 each race for the 360 high water spot.

Thanks to Bezzer and his help in getting the Mule to Victorville as it came in handy for these challenged walking shoes. The next travel trip is to Hanford and it happens to be my next race unless I can sneak over to Ventura before then. The crowd looked healthy and the promoter even brought in the “Raging Inferno”, a fire truck with a jet engine to blast away behind it. In the dark it was cool.

I took over 1500 photos this weekend at Victorville, most due to being up high enough to shoot over the fence with no wires to worry about. Most of the fairgrounds are like that because the fences aren’t as tall as Perris and the seats go up higher in the grandstands. It sure takes longer to go thru them and I found some OK to use.

My B-ball attendance topped out at 88 games with 15 college of that total and I am done! I’ll miss the next race due to circumstances beyond my control so have fun without me. Let’s get out there and support our racers, if you can’t go, send some money to them.