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Traditional Sprint Car FanSite |
See You At The Races!!! |
| HOT LAPS WITH NORM BOGAN
#04D by Norm Bogan |
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Well it finally happened, the long awaited southern California sprint racing season. Perris Auto Speedway hosted the opening event for the newly formed USAC/CRA sprint cars. The haulers started queuing up around noon and slowly straggled in, until a total of twenty-seven racecars were in the pits. It was an interesting mix of teams from the past several years of competition at the PAS, plus several newcomers, a few visitors and one cagey old veteran. The regulars included Gardner, Williams, Rutherford, Kirby, Tony Jones, Levi Jones, Bragg, Brian Venard, Hermansader, Mitchell, Ballard, Heidenreich, Marcum, Crawford, Di Donato, Kruseman and Josh Ford. Newcomers were the reigning Lightning Sprint champ, David Cardey aboard the “Tooth Doc’s” #59 and Matthew Rossi from Arizona, who ran mostly with the SWUSAC sprinters last year, but plans to run all season on the USAC/CRA series. Both drivers hope to vie for Rookie of the Year honors. Two drivers stepped up from their VRA roots, Greg Taylor who will split his time between the USAC Western States Pavement series in his family car and drive the Mike Sala #19S on the off weekends. Ronnie Case has wanted to move up to the 410 cars for the past couple of years and finally secured a ride in the legendary Don Blair’s #33. Visitors included Rick Ziehl from New Mexico, John Stanbrough and Tony Elliott from Indiana. Levi Jones, Kruseman and Ford each get half credit for regular and half for visitors, running the full USAC National sprint car schedule, Kruseman for Tony Stewart, Ford for Keith Kunz and Levi possibly with Jeff Walker. On off weekends, they will come back to the West Coast to run, Kruseman in the Alexander #4 car, Ford in his family’s #73 car and Levi in a Crossno #38 backup car. Journeying down from the winged northlands of California, were the #25N of Jason York and the #92N of Andy Forsberg. If you attended races back at Ascot in the 80s and 90s, you might remember the “The Flying Polack”, Duane Feduska, coming out after a nearly fourteen-year hiatus. With the lower car count, there were only three heat races with The Demon gathering his first victory in the Chaffin #50 car. It wasn’t easy though as Rick Ziehl diced back and forth with Damion until finally succumbing to second place. Greg Bragg showed strength in the Pratt #12 storming to the front and moving away from his chasers to capture his first heat victory of the year. David Cardey was very impressive in his heat until getting up against the south turn wall and going to the pits for repairs. Josh Ford took the point and held on for the win. Troy Rutherford got caught up in a turn one altercation during the first heat, but made repairs and came back to win the Semi. In the feature, Jason York led the first two laps from his front row starting position, before Mike Kirby blasted around like a rocket ship and took the lead. Kirby put on an awesome performance, lapping nearly half the field. At the finish, Kruseman, Williams, Rutherford and Gardner pursued Kirby. Tony Jones had a good start to his season with a seventh place finish and looking like the “on the gas and elbows up” Tony of old. And what about Feduska, well he finished eighth in his heat race and ninth in the Semi. For this year, Glenn Crossno made a pact with Mike Kirby to go all out for the season point championship. Well, nice guy Crossno now finds himself atop the point standings as a car owner and savored the victory by Kirby as his first car owner feature win. Glenn came on the sprint car scene several years ago as a Rookie of the Year candidate. After suffering injuries in a crash late in the year, Glenn opted to be a winning car owner and hire others to pilot his car. Crossno is a very successful businessman, operating a business that manufacturers products for the medical industry, including heart stents, used in place of bypass surgery for many heart patients. He operates facilities both in southern California and North Carolina, commuting back and forth weekly. Glenn dedicated his racing efforts to be a top-notch team and has been close to victory several times, with Levi Jones at the controls. It was a big win for Crossno and a crowd favorite, Kirby. Fans were finally able to witness real racing tonight and all is well, once again in southern California sprint racing. It was a pretty good opening night crowd with some great racing under the full moon and a very pleasant evening. Next stop for this band of racers will be at Manzanita in two weeks for the Gary Sokola Classic on Friday and Saturday, March 20 & 21. After an outing on April 3rd to Kings Speedway, returning to the PAS on April 10th. |
