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Traditional Sprint Car FanSite |
See You At The Races!!! |
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TWO DAYS OF TURKEY WINGS by Norm Bogan |
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While most of my race watching is of the traditional (non-wing) variety of
sprint car racing, I attended a pretty good winged program for the first time
last year. The two days following
Thanksgiving, warriors from the NARC/Golden State series staged shows on Friday
at Tulare Thunderbowl and Saturday at Bakersfield Speedway.
Joining in were a few outsiders, including Kasey Kahne, Joey Saldana and
Danny Lasoski.
The Tulare show gave the fans some great racing with a car count of thirty-four, featuring many of the top guns from northern and central California. The show included four heat races, a Semi and a thirty-lap Main Event. Heat winners were Lasoski, Kevin Pylant, Steve Kent and Kahne, with Saldana capturing the Semi. Steve Kent looked to be heading to a win, when he was caught on the white flag lap and tangled with Tim Kaeding, sending Kent into the wall and Kaeding on to victory. The following night at Bakersfield, the car count was down by four, but California Lightning Sprints were also running as a support class. The format was the same as the previous night with Kevin Pylant, Danny Lasoski, Brent Kaeding and Toni Lutar collecting the heat race wins. Joey Saldana was victorious in the Semi again tonight and Jason Meyers prevailed over Jason Statler and Peter Murphy in the Saturday night feature. For the past couple of years, the longtime northern California based 410 winged sprints have suffered with the loss of tracks and diminished car counts. Several individuals have stepped up in an attempt to return NARC to its past glory. Racing announcer, Bobby Gerould grew up with these racers and much of his “Hammerdown” website is devoted to the NARC sprinters. Car owner Morrie Williams has invested much to field a competitive team and also felt compelled to take action in an effort to stimulate renewed interest in NARC racing. Bobby and Morrie joined with Bakersfield entrepreneur and promoter, Jim Smith to stage this two-day show. It is their hope that NARC can return to the prestige that they enjoyed for so many years. This holiday weekend show drew good car counts and reasonable crowds considering the possibility of bad weather. Hopefully, the dream of these men can be carried over to a number of other tracks that will stage events for the NARC racers in the coming year. |
