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VENTURA, CA - For the second time in two weeks Blake Miller has scored a feature race win in the USAC/CRA Sprint Car series.
Starting in eighth place Miller caught up to the early leader, David Cardey on the sixth lap and stalked him until the seventeenth lap when Cardey was hindered by lapped traffic. Cardey was stuck behind Chris Wakim when Miller got past the both of them. Cardey was not far behind and was still trying to clear Wakim when Wakim slapped the wall exiting turn two. He rebounded towards the middle of the track and hit Cardey who spun and hit the front straight wall while sliding backwards. At the same time, back in the fourth turn Rickie Gaunt and Cory Kruseman were fighting over third place when both spun to a stop in the fourth turn.
Three of the top five positions were eliminated from the fight in one lap. Miller now had the lead with Danny Sheridan and Tony Jones in second and third. Michael Spencer was fourth and Jimmy Crawford was
fifth. In the final ten laps Jones put on a charge which fell short. He passed Sheridan but never got too close to Miller. Then in the final laps Spencer started his own charge, passing Sheridan on lap 26 and taking second from Jones near the end. Jones faltered and slipped to fifth behind Sheridan and Rip Williams.
It was Blake Miller's first USAC/CRA win at Ventura, but it was not his sprint car win there. He was the season champion in the Ventura tracks 360 CI sprint series in 2005. Blake also set the fast time in qualifying at 12.111 seconds.
Josh Ford, David Cardey and Chris Wakim were the heat winners while Rip Williams won the B Feature. Twenty four cars made qualifying attempts.
An unusual incident happened in qualifying as Kevin Kierce qualified second fast and then flipped in the second turn on his cool off lap. Josh Ford also flipped this night during the feature. Neither driver was
injured.
A 20 lap support race by the VRA Serior sprint car series was won by Ron Bach.
The USAC/CRA Sprint Car series returns to Perris Auto Speedway on June seventh.
QUOTES-
BLAKE MILLER: “We got some cheater stuff on there that hopefully no one ever finds out. I can't say thanks to my crew enough. Jeff Gardner built one heck of a car. Again it was unfortunate the night that the bolt broke and it ran into the fence and it broke everything but Red Line stepped up and got this thing back togather and got it into the winner's circle twice and also got two fast times. Hats off to Jeff Gardner, Jack
Gardner, Jim Gardner, Ronnie Gardner, Chet Gardner, Nadine Gardner, Jack 'Little Dog' Gardner, I can't say thanks to the whole family enough.”
MICHAEL SPENCER: “We come home second and we're happy with that considering the way things were looking earlier tonight.”
Story Courtesy http:motorsportsforum.com
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