By Ken Wagner
June 22, 2009

Oh S#&#! ………. That might sum it all up for everyone but David Cardey who swooped past all who were left after monster madness at Petaluma to take the win on a cool windy night with a surprising 28 cars in the house and all kinds of smashing activity on the racy little track. Most of the race, when it all settled down after two opening problems, four cars fought on for the win. The local 360 wing 2008 Champion, Alissa Geving, Blake Miller and Mike Spencer were left to fight that out with Cardey.

For my pics Click here. For Chucko's pics Click here. For the Doug Allen pics Click here for them.

DynOmite David didn’t start up front, and in fact almost stopped on the track on one small encounter that had him avoiding a Kamikaze blast aimed at him that would have put him out. The place to run on the track was mostly on the bottom and that is where David made his important passes. He worked his way by Alissa and Blake to run up behind the leader and, since he was the fastest cat out there, ran under him for the lead and pulled away. David had fast time at 14.616 on a late qualifying pass, then came from the back of his heat to win that before starting 8th in the main event. He kept his cool with all the craziness and received his second win of the year for his strong efforts and completed his clean sweep, only the fourth in recent history. The trip up was good for him and his crew as he retained his point lead.

The opening green flag start was almost a repeat of last week as Danny Sheridan lined up on the outside of the front row next to a white car just like then. Danny had experienced a car destroying crash at Santa Maria the week before from the outside front row spot, but it couldn’t happen two weeks in a row, could it? Well don’t hold your breath as Danny was on the outside of row next to a white car, egads!!! As the field took the green flag and headed towards turn one, pole sitter Terry Schank went into a tall wheel stand that was kinda like the fuel dragsters often pulled in the 60’s and 70’s. You know the drill, with the front wheels cocked to one side as they blast forward. Unfortunately when Terry’s front end hit the ground, his wheels were still pointed hard right locked towards Danny, and his car darted right for him. The crash sent Danny eventually spinning backwards towards the turn one wall as Schank was flipping wildly in the air behind him. In fact Terry clanked on top of the Ripper before finally crashing into the wall, where Danny had fortunately slid to the left and vacated that spot, or it would have been worse for the little blue bugger. Restart!!!! Rip got fixed and was back in his spot on the restart because of the “if three or more crash, they get their spot back, if they can come back", but Terry and Danny were done. Danny’s crew actually repaired all the obvious problems and sent him back out, but when the motor fired, something in the drive train separated as soon as he had power and he continued back to the pits, all done again.

The next start made it thru turns one, two and three, hooray, but when turn 4 came up, someone behind the leader began a spin and collected at least a dozen cars, whack, whack, whack, whack, smash, crash and bang. I can’t be sure who did it, but I would bet he, or she, knows who the guilty party is. At the end of this melee with cars still on the track running, a couple of cars came upon the scene under power and rushed in to join the pile. Both hit the pile, and one had his wheels bounce up so high, it sent him over backwards for my first ever witness of a flyover by a sprint car! Not funny, but what were those two looking at? The next restart put one of the back markers in the third row, so many cars were involved.

I didn’t expect so many cars to come up, but of the 15 cars that traveled from So Cal, most had their problems, some of which were not of their own doing. There were at least three 410 local cars plus the rest of what they call wingless sprints up there. These cars had 360" steel block motors with a 2 barrel carburetor and could be considered to be “down on power” when push came to shove, as they ran against the strong CRA cars. Was this a problem? I guess the two major problems were probably more jitters than lack of horsepower, but the little guys throttle response was not as quick, and you could see some hesitation on the faster cars part. They probably shouldn’t have been on the track at the same time, but that’s hindsight, and I can’t pinpoint the two incidents to that. It made a fuller field, but at what cost?

Blake Miller looked like he was going to be hard to beat as he wormed his way past a few fast cars, but he had one small incident that he repeated several times. To explain, you had to see the track configuration to understand why it could happen. Turns one and two were very nicely banked so you could run a high groove into it and it would support the cars path around there giving cars a boost onto the backstretch. Turns three and four were very flat, so there was no high groove, and anyone running outside the low groove didn’t have enough traction to do anything but drop back. Blake missed the bottom a couple of times and gave up track position coming around there early in the race. He wasn’t alone getting caught in that path, but had he not got detained in those sideways jaunts, he would have been in the lead very early, in my opinion of course. He drove hard the last half and fought with both Alissa and Spencer to get his second place spot, but couldn’t catch back up with the winner.

Mike Spencer went right for the lead after the two early problems and held it for 16 laps. He had two good battles with young 17 year old Alissa during the race. Early on she managed to show him her tail, but a yellow put him back in the lead on the restart. He paid more attention from that point on, but on the last lap she made another run at him, and he was prepared for her, holding her back to 4th.

This is a statement, not a complaint, but the sad part of the event for the fans ,who paid $25 to see the CRA, and of course the racers who had early showers this week, was many did not get to show their stuff to those fans after towing the long distance up for one race. With half the field gone before a lap was in, it didn’t make for a great show. The top 4 put on some passing as they were out front on their own, while the rest were bundled up in a follow the leader pack that didn’t give the fans much to watch like a normal full field can do. In addition the companion feature had 5 midgets run 25 laps stringing them out nicely, to quote an announcer friend of mine some years ago. So the locals only had Miss Alissa to cheer for, and they surely did. It was said she was making her first appearance non wing with a 410 and she was fast on her home track.

The next race is the 4th of July race at the PAS, so another week off comes this weekend so I can rest up for that trip. This week gave me an opportunity to do two things I had on my agenda that brought great pleasure for me. First I went to Kevin Kierce’s “bunker” racing shop and had a great visit and saw how he keeps his racing team going. To see the visual, Click here. Then Kevin took me on a little walk to, of all things, Jay’s Garage. I even got to meet the former Tonight Show host while we took the tour. For that story Click here.

Wagsdash is still a subject and I am mulling ($#@&*$#*&%*#) it over in what to do. It was so easy when we just worked on our trip to the greatest little track by the sea, but I am over that. There really are 4 options, but I can’t seem to lay out the pro’s and con’s enough to make a decision. I am working on it and will do something, or nuthin’, very soon.

6/20/09 Petaluma FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. David Cardey, 2. Blake Miller, 3. Mike Spencer, 4. Alissa Geving, 5. Matt Streeter, 6. Shane Golobic, 7. Tyler Schmidt, 8. Cody Williams, 9. Dave Press, 10. Garrett Hansen, 11. Austin Williams, 12. Rip Williams, 13. Greg Alexander, 14. Matt Mitchell, 15. Arvo Backholm, 16. Terry Schank, 17. Danny Sheridan, 18. Greg Bragg, 19. Ronnie Gardner, 20. Dennis Howell, 21. Norm Johns, 22. Mathew Shedarowich. NT.

NEW LUCAS OIL USAC/CRA SPRINT CAR POINTS: 1-David Cardey-434; 2-Blake Miller-403; 3-Mike Spencer-401; 4-Garrett Hansen-375; 5-Greg Bragg-313; 6-Danny Sheridan-304; 7-Rip Williams-262; 8-Matt Mitchell-256; 9-Cory Kruseman-231; 10-Cody Williams-200.

NEXT LUCAS OIL USAC/CRA SPRINT CAR RACE: July 4– Perris (CA) Auto Speedway