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Traditional Sprint Car FanSite |
See You At The Races!!! |
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THE
UPSURGE OF YOUNG DRIVERS AT VENTURA RACEWAY by Norm Bogan |
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Back in January, Ventura Raceway announced that new classes for junior drivers would be on the regular schedule for the 2006-racing season. Of course that was back in the middle of winter, when there was sunshine and great weather. It seemed that about every Thursday or Friday another round of rainstorms arrived, making the racing facilities unusable. After five weeks of rainouts, the season finally got underway. To date there have been two outings for the Junior Ford Focus cars and this past weekend was the Junior Midgets and Mini Dwarf cars second chance to compete. The racing surface for these two classes is a one-eighth mile track in the center of the infield. For old-timers at Ventura, this is where the speedway bikes, Go-Karts and T.Q. Midgets used to race. These youngsters are just beginning their racing careers, many with a long lineage in motorsports, as the children and grandchildren of racers currently participating in the “Big Kids” arena. There were sixteen Mini Dwarfs and seven Junior Midgets. The Mini Dwarf cars race with a 5 horsepower Briggs and Stratton or Tecumseh engine, which are just enough for these youngsters to handle. The Junior Midgets are fitted with World Formula Briggs and Stratton engines and piloted by children from eleven through sixteen. Many of these kids have already participated in Go-Kart or Quarter Midget racing. The Mini Dwarfs ran two heats and two features splitting the field in half to give each participant, an adequate racing surface. Chase Lippert, whose father; uncle and Grandpa all raced regular Dwarf cars collected the first feature and Austin Figueroa, whose Dad was a former Dwarf Champion and now races a VRA Pro Sprint Car, took home the second feature. Chris Olson followed by Christian Copley captured the Junior Midget feature. As the Juniors exhibit the skills to drive these racing machines, there are more entries on the way and it appears that the “Junior” racing classes are quite popular. Racing at Ventura has become a real family affair. Bob Alderman, who currently leads the VRA Senior Sprint class has his daughter, Emma driving a Mini Dwarf, painted and numbered just like Dad’s car. Rob Kershaw with the VRA Pro Sprints is now joined by his sixteen-year-old son, Cody in Dad’s backup sprinter and younger son; Tanner is competing with the Mini Dwarf group. Past Dwarf Car champion, Mike Sweeney and his wife Carmen have devoted themselves to baby sitting this group of youngsters, which includes a couple of their grandkids. Mike and Carmen are longtime participants and organizers for the Dwarf Car group. In other news from Ventura, there were seventeen Pony Stocks in the pits and defending Champion, Mike Frazier claimed the feature victory. The VRA Pro Dwarf cars had nineteen cars in the field, with former champion, Rob Anderson collecting the brass ring. The VRA Senior Dwarfs staged eighteen cars, with Johnny Lynch taking home the feature win. The VRA Senior Sprints brought us twenty-one cars with Bob Alderman scoring his second feature win of the year. The VRA Pro Sprints thirty-three entries saw Michael Trimble set on the point for nearly the whole feature, before tangling with another car and ending up in the infield. Veteran racer, Troy Rutherford drove his black # 11 car home in front for his first feature win of the season. It was not a bad crowd, despite the fact that
NASCAR was competing against the locals with a televised Saturday
night Nextel Cup show from Darlington.
Most of all, the weather was DRY!!
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