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Traditional Sprint Car FanSite |
See You At The Races!!! |
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MIDSEASON CHANGE OF PACE |
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Decisions, decisions, its Saturday night and the SCRA race at Bakersfield has been cancelled. Bandit Sprints and USAC Midgets were running at Santa Maria, but that was nearly three hours away. How about that little paved track down the road, after all it is just forty-five minutes away? Irwindale Speedway won out. I hadn’t been to Irwindale
since the preseason practice sessions, although staying up to date on the weekly
results. The early afternoon was
spent visiting with old acquaintances in the pits and meeting in the Media
Center swapping stories with my cronies. Tonight’s
fare was Legends Cars, Grand Am Modifieds, Mod 4s, Super Stocks and Late Models,
with a total of 123 cars qualifying. Settling into the Press Box
overlooking the speedway, I met a few reporters for local newspapers and racing
trades. These normal beat reporters
have a great job working at this facility on a regular basis.
The Press Box is equipped with a computer printer and copier, so that
results can be transmitted directly from scoring and then copied for the
journalists in attendance. Hook ups
are accommodating so those on the Deadline Media can record their stories on
their laptops and then email them to the respective publications. As the evening got underway, the
Late Models and Mod 4s ran a Trophy Dash and then they queued up for their
respective features. The Legends
and Mod 4s ran on the third-mile track, while the other classes challenged the
half-mile. Twenty-three Legends
vied for the 30-lap feature victory, which found Ricky Wildman at the top of the
podium. Guy Tripp led twenty-three
entries to the Mod 4 victory, which consisted of 21 Fords (Mustangs and Pintos),
one Toyota and one Renault. Moving to the big track, Rod
Johnson garnered his first victory in nearly three years in the Grand Am class,
besting fifteen other entries. Next came the featured class of the night, the Auto Club Late
Models with twenty-eight entries. Tim
Huddleston had set a new track record in qualifying and backed it up with the
win of tonight’s fifty-lap feature, closely pursued by Mike Price and David
Hessing. The top three finishers in
the featured series of the evening are brought to the press box for a Q&A
session after the race. One item of
note was that Huddleston is the son-in-law of stock car icon, Roarin’ Oren
Prosser, who now at age 62 is competing in the Senior Sprint Car class at
Ventura Raceway. Prosser just
scored his first open-wheel feature win and it was Tim’s turn to keep up the
family tradition.
Closing out the evening were thirty-five Super Stocks going for forty laps. As the race developed, it became a three-car race for the lead. Andrew Phipps prevailed followed closely by Dan Fitzgerald and Lee Ladd. As Phipps and Fitzgerald recognized their fathers and crews for all they did to get them to the front, Ladd acknowledged the work of his car builders, Loren and Keith Spangler, who rebuilt a car that Lee had destroyed last Saturday evening. While this wasn’t Sprint Cars
and asphalt instead of clay, an enjoyable evening was experienced with the
opportunity to hobnob with many dedicated racers.
You always feel welcome at Irwindale and the racers are very
accommodating. With talented track
PR man, Doug Stokes, you never know what surprise guest may appear to exchange
banter with the journalists. Irwindale is one of the premier
short tracks in the country, with seating for 6500 in the Main Grandstand and
weekly crowds averaging over 5000. The
Pit Grandstands are better than the main stands at many famous venues around the
country. The lighting and sound systems are first class and the wide
banked turns allow for some exciting side by side racing.
Whenever you visit southern California and are looking for a good evening
of racing, seek out nearby Irwindale Speedway.
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