By Ken Wagner
April 12, 2008

Does the name Johnny Rodriguez sound familiar in sprint cars, yes and no. Yes in that he has driven Mark Priestley’s beautiful yellow car and a few others in recent times, but no his success hasn’t been the greatest up to now, except in midgets. But, reflect on this story, he showed up in a high dollar rig as a teammate to Matt Mitchell and sets fast time “outa da box” and Matt came in second to him on the clock. In the inversion they were the fourth row to start the main and Johnny immediately started moving forward. When the dust settled, and that’s probably moon dust as the not near full moon must have been choreographing the evening, he was the clear cut winner holding off a charging Cory Kruseman to the checkered flag.

Wags pics Click here to see. Doug Allen's great stuff is here to see.

Obviously, Johnny’s experience put him in the winners circle, but tonight he was the quickest driver out there and was passing cars until the very end. Winning his first ever CRA race, he was plenty pleased and I am sure in Las Vegas if you had money down on him, it would have been a great longshot win for both of you. Great job by the young man who had some previous looks in a sprinter, but now has a reason to come back a do it again.

Cory Kruseman took the point lead back from a main event crashing Mike Spencer and was runner-up for the second race in a row. Cory was third quick on the night and won his heat before starting sixth in the main. He was patient and put on a late race charge that just came up short.

If E for effort would have been good enough, R J Johnson would have won this one. He led 15 early laps and battled hard to come away with the win, but did a great job to get on the podium in third ahead of The Cowboy and many others. In fact the battle between himself and Tony Jones early was pretty classic for a few laps before he pulled ahead of him slightly.

The night was a mess of crashes with a few returning to race some more after needy repairs. Luis Espinoza got on his head in qualifying, but came back to run 11th in the main later. Henry Clarke flipped in his heat race, but started the semi and just missed a transfer later. Billy Blinn flipped down the front stretch in the semi and was done for the night. Mike Spencer was a victim of a front end breaking, causing him to crash in the main when he was running second and closing in on the leader . Tyler Brown seemed to head up the track into the cushion where he appeared to stick a wheel and went over while he was probably running 4th or so. Josh Ford got on his head pretty hard in the main and was done as well as Cody Williams who also crashed out of the wild one.

Garrett Hansen brought his own car out this week with the Priestley bunch there to support him. He started 11th in the main and surged into the lead on lap 17 with some fast low groove action. On lap 25, he had Tony Jones and Danny Sheridan coming after him hard when he came down the front stretch and pitched it low into turn one. Unfortunately, the car went wide right and straight into the wall where the Cowboy, hard on it in the top groove, barely clipped him trying to get by and then Showtime got into Tony as they had a quick gathering to a stop there. Jones was the only one able to restart and he surged back into 4th in the five laps left. Matt Mitchell put an exclamation mark on the many crashes with his wild one with three laps to go and him in 5th place. This was after going to the back on a red flag violation of crewman working on the car when the final horn sounded. That was an extra long main event and trying on both racers and fans alike.

Rickie Gaunt drove a brand new Gardner car with the number 25 tonight. The white car is being run with Jack Gardner Senior’s old racing number on it in his honor. Now the 4 car team has red, white, black and blue cars, so we shall be able to tell them apart when they all run the same race. The red car with Tyler Brown up ran strong early and the blue Sled was 5th in Bullet Blake Miller’s hands.

Allan Ballard got his first seat time in a while in the Ray Stansberry # 75 and ran 6th after going to the back on a crewman late working on the car during a red flag start. The way that works is when the white flag appears at the flagstand during a red flag stop, they can go work on the cars. Then a horn sounds that means 2 minutes left to work on the car. When the next horn blows, the crews have to be away from the car or they go to the back just like they do when they change a tire!

Eric Severson was in Jim Cherry’s Carpet Coop special again this week and was the hard charger of the week coming from 21st to 9th at the end.

Chris “shiny tire” Tramel was in a borrowed car with Tony Everhart’s help and made a valiant attempt to make the main, but a smoking motor sent him to the pits earlier than he wanted. Years ago he won a few Wagtimes shiney tire awards working on the Harlan Willis # 45 and later was racing the 360 Ventura series. More recently he has been back east crewing on sprint cars.

The time has come for the first open show of the Gardner/Faas promotions. Running at Victorville Raceway in Victorville, California on Saturday night April 19th, the pits open at noon and the spectator gates at 4 pm. The admission prices are very reasonable with $12 adult tickets and it’s only $25 to get in the pits. The payoff is a healthy near $18,000 with $4000 to win and $300 to start. It is like going back a few years when Frank Lewis paid the CRA pretty well and the hope is that everyone will have fun and make more money than usual. There is a very unique trophy for the winner and a number of special monetary awards including money from three of my photographer friends. They include Fast Time awards of $100.00 from Jim Fargo and Steve Lafond, Hard Charger awards of $200.00 also from Jim Fargo and Steve Lafond, plus the top 360 in A main gets $100.00 from Hoseheads West and Wagtimes is adding $200.00 for the Hard Luck car owner. There are many more special awards as the first of what they hope is many more open events blasts off this week. A unique line-up of the top 8 transferred from the heats to the main will be set by those drivers drawing from a huge deck to place them in their order on the start in front of the pack. Rumor has it there will be a special playful short “extra” race that might be Kangarooish in nature. The top drivers will be there, including Tony Jones, Cory Kruseman, Mike Spencer, David Cardey, Davey Pombo, Alan Ballard, Garrett Hansen, Blake Miller, Tyler Brown and on and on. They come to race, have fun and take home some money!

Keep in your scheduling plans the 18th annual Wagsdash at Ventura Raceway on September 6th, the first of only two CRA races there this year. There will be a special drivers calendar this year that the girls will want, so be ready for that one. Think about auction items to be added for that day’s annual auction and just get ready for another fun day. Can you believe 18 years of this madness? I sure can’t!

FEATURE: (30 laps - With Starting Positions) 1. Johnny Rodriguez (8th), 2. Cory Kruseman (6th), 3. R.J. Johnson (2nd), 4. Tony Jones (1st), 5. Blake Miller (9th), 6. Alan Ballard (13th), 7. Nic Faas (17th), 8. Rodney Argo (18th), 9. Eric Severson (21st), 10. Royal Adderson (20th), 11. Luis Espinoza (22nd), 12. Matt Mitchell (7th), 13. Garrett Hansen (11th), 14. Danny Sheridan (10th), 15. Rickie Gaunt (15th), 16. David Cardey (12th), 17. Cody Williams (19th), 18. Josh Ford (4th), 19. Jordan Hermansader (16th), 20. Tyler Brown (5th), 21. Mike Spencer (3rd), 22. Davey Pombo (14th). NT

FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Lap 1 Jones, Laps 2-16 Johnson, Laps 17-24 Hansen, Laps 25-30 Rodriguez.

NEW USAC/CRA SPRINT CAR POINTS: 1-Kruseman-492; 2-Spencer-450; 3-Miller-410; 4-Hansen-381; 5-Sheridan-367; 6-Brown-354; 7-Levi Jones-350; 8-Jesse Hockett-292; 9-Faas-284; 10-Ford-259.

NEXT USAC/CRA SPRINT CAR RACE:
April 26 – Perris (CA) Auto Speedway