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Traditional Sprint Car FanSite |
See You At The Races!!! |
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View From The PAS! by Scott Daloisio |
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| March 4, 2003 |
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Temecula Valley Pipe and Supply and Vista Paint will next present the Napa Auto Parts/Auto Trader Magazines SCRA Sprint Cars at The PAS on March 15th. The Pick-A-Part Cruisers will join them. The VRA Sprint Cars will be back on March 22nd with the USAC Ford Focus Midgets and the IMCA Modifieds. Incidentally, the March 1st rained out main events for SCRA and VRA will be made up before the regular shows on those nights… Josh Wise, who was impressive during a brief stint driving for Don Argo near the end of 2002, will return to SCRA competition on May 17th driving for Northern California’s Mike Sala. Wise will also do some driving in the Bandit 360 series and will continue to drive the family cars and sometimes for Dino Tomassi in Midget action… Midget tanks on Sprint Cars! Can you say “Run Out of Fuel???” Andy Forsberg is one of the nicest guys you will ever meet, but over the last couple of years, he has had his share of bad luck at The PAS. A few weeks ago a fuel fitting came off and he stopped on the front straight with a small fire at The PAS? Well, his bad luck continued four nights later when he started having stomach pains. Turns out he had acute appendicitis. By the next morning, he had surgery and his appendix was removed. The doctor estimated that he would be out of the Sprint Car for about three weeks. Best wishes to him for a quick recovery… Speaking of his fire at The PAS, did you see SCRA “Safety Guru” Shane Holt put the fire out? By the time he got there it was just a small flame so he bent over and blew it out like it was candles on a birthday cake… Bubby Jones ex-crew chief Jim McQueen and Russell Bliss will be calling the shots for John Scott this season in USAC competition… Verne Sweeney put on a great show at the SCRA season opener. The veteran driver passed rookie Alan Ballard coming off turn four on the last lap of the B Main for the final transfer spot. He then went from 14th to 5th in the A Main. Very impressive run… “Super” Rickie Gaunt turned in another good run as well. The “John Force” of SCRA started dead last (22nd) in the A Main and finished fourth… Love the great Sprint Car Trivia questions Lance Jennings has been putting on his www.scrafan.com message board. Very, very challenging… I am amazed that USAC scheduled their first Western State Sprint Car race of the season at Irwindale on October 4th directly opposite the SCRA/VRA Sprint Car Doubleheader at The PAS. USAC, at the time their schedule was released a few weeks ago (incidentally The PAS/SCRA schedule was released last November), did not have a Western Sprint Car race scheduled the week before on September 27th when The PAS is running Figure 8s. Nor did USAC have Western Sprint Car races on the schedule for the next seven weeks after, when The PAS only had Sprint Cars on the schedule twice. All of the times they could have scheduled that race when it would not conflict with another Sprint Car race less than an hour away, and they step directly on everyone’s toes – including their own! Who really gets the shaft on the deal? The fans and the two tracks! Fans who would attend both shows now have to make a choice! That is just unbelievable. Well, then again, it really isn’t!!! Where is Bobby Graham? He had several good runs last year and it is sad not seeing him with a ride thus far in 2003… There were 41 cars in the pits for the SCRA season opener two weeks ago and we had 20 different chassis’ represented. TCR led the way with 9 cars followed by Stinger with 5 and John Boy with four. What was winner Troy Rutherford driving you ask? The only Kunz in the field! Tony Jones was second in an Avenger and Mike English third in a Stinger… Steve Gresham, who is contesting his first full year with VRA, should be a familiar name to old Speedway Motorcycle fans. Gresham started racing Speedway in Southern California in the 1970s and then raced in the British League and represented the USA in Europe into the early 1980s… Wonderful story
on Ascot Park in the March issue of
“Sprint Car & Midget” Magazine.
Noted author John Sawyer penned the piece that includes
photos of Ron Shuman, Bubby Jones, Dean Thompson, Jimmy Oskie,
Leland McSpadden, Eddie Wirth and Jeff Heywood… |
