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See You At The Races!!! |
| RACING
SCENE by Tim Kennedy |
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USAC Midgets |
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Irwindale, CA, Apr. 26 - Tracy Hines and Michael Lewis won
the USAC National and Western States Midget Series "Mopar Twin
25-lap Main Events" presented by Mission Foods Saturday on the
Irwindale Speedway paved half-mile before 5,500 fans. The
Steve Lewis/Premier Racing Entertainment promoted event offered a
$50,000 bonus to any driver able to win both features after starting
the second 25 from last position. Hines, from New Castle, IN, provided the excitement in the second 25 by charging from 25th grid position to finish sixth, 5.406 seconds in back of winner Lewis. The second 25-lap winner also won the 2002 USAC Turkey Night Midget 100-lap Grand Prix at Irwindale last November in a different car. Hines drove the Wilke Pak, Oxi-Clean Beast/Mopar, which carried a yellow ribbon from the cage to designate it as the $50,000-eligible car. Hines passed three cars on the first lap and he passed seven cars by the end of lap four. However, his car spun to a halt low in the second turn on lap five after being pinched off by another car in traffic. Hines, a 30-year old newlywed of two weeks, restarted at the back of the remaining 21-car field. He advanced quickly to 11th position by lap 10. He was tenth on lap 16, ninth on lap l7, eighth on lap 18, seventh on lap 19 and sixth on lap 21. With no yellow flags after the fifth lap caution, Hines remained more than two seconds behind the fourth place driver at the finish. The purse payoff was $32,000 when the bonus went unclaimed. Dave Steele won the first PRE Twin 25s $50,000 bonus last September at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Hines started third in the first 25. On lap two he passed initial leader/polesitter Jason Leffler, the three-time USAC National Midget Champion (1997-99) and current NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series driver. Leffler drove the Western Speed Racing/Team ASE Beast/Ed Pink Ford in which Lewis won the last Thanksgiving GP at Irwindale. Hines, the lap two-25 leader, had a 1.068 second winning margin at Tony Roberts checkered flag. Runner-up Michael Lewis, in Gary Hansen's Beast/Fontana, started ninth in the second 25-lap race. Pole starter Josh Wise, the tenth place driver in the first 25 aboard his family-owned Beast/Ed Pink Chevy, led the first four circuits. Fourth starter A. J. Fike led laps five through 22. Lewis took command on lap 23 with an inside pass exiting the fourth turn and led to the finish. Fike trailed by 0.844 seconds. In the first 25, Lewis, Kasey Kahne, Steele and point leader J. J. Yeley followed. Twenty-three of the 25 starters finished and 22 drivers completed all 25 laps. Kahne was fresh from starting ninth and finishing fourth Saturday afternoon in the NASCAR Busch Grand National 300 at California Speedway in Fontana. Kahne was able to practice in his Midget only Friday night for less than an hour. However, the 23-year old rising star from Enumclaw, WA set fastest qualifying time in time trials at Irwindale. He drove one of promoter Steve Lewis' three Beast/Ed Pink Fords. Kahne was only 0.047 seconds off the one-lap track record of 16.718 (107.668 mph) set by Steele last Thanksgiving. The ten fastest qualifiers in the 31-driver field went directly to the first 25-lap feature. The balance of the field raced in a pair of 12-lap qualifying races that transferred the first seven finishers into the first 25-lap race. Josh Wise and Ryan Durst won the two qualifying races. The eighth place drivers were alternates, if needed, for the features. A Western States provisional berth went to Michael Simpson. The second 25 had A. J. Fike, Steele, Bobby East and Aaron Fike in second through fifth finishing positions. Seventeen of the 25 drivers finished, with 15 drivers on the lead lap. The only mishap of the evening occurred on the fifth lap when two cars tangled at the end of the backstretch and two Steve Lewis cars, driven by Kahne and Yeley, became involved and spun up the track into the third turn wall. Kahne drove his damaged car to the pits. Yeley lost a lap but finished the race. Hines said, "The car was definitely good enough. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. It's kind of hard to pass down on the flat part of the track. I couldn't get by them high and low. A car moved down in turn two and pinched me off when I spun. You don't think of winning the money, you just want to win. My car really pulled down the straights, and it was fast getting into the turns. I'm looking forward to returning here Turkey Night in this Mopar car. I know we were good. All speeds here are so close you can't do a slide job if cars are two or three abreast." Hines continued, "I was not happy with my progress in the second 25. I was good on top, but it bogged down low. They changed the way they did the inversion here and made it harder to do. At IRP (last September) the full field was inverted. They only inverted ten tonight and they were too fast to catch with that much of a head start. It would've been interesting if there had been another yellow flag. If it had been 50-laps, I could've done it." Second 25 winner Lewis stated, "I've been lucky lately. Thanks to Steve Lewis (unrelated) for putting on this race. Tracy (Hines) had us beat tonight." RACER Magazine added $5,000 lap money for the twin-25s with $100 per lap paid to the first three drivers each lap. The magazine also paid $5,000 for a combined points-fund that was paid to the first three drivers in overall points after both 25-lap races. The winner received $2,500, with second and third collecting $1,500 and $1,000 respectively. Bobby East took the USAC Midgets points lead by three points over prior leader Yeley in both National and Western States Series. Renowned drivers Dan Gurney and Parnelli Jones attended the Twin 25s. Jones signed autographs for fans during the track's usual 6:00-6:30 p.m autograph session on the front straight as did competing drivers. Jones' No. 83 Hollywood Spring & Axle Offy Midget from the l960s was on loan from the Justice Brothers Museum and on display at the track. USAC President Rollie Helmling also attended. With NASCAR racing in nearby Fontana, racing executives Dan Davis, from Ford, and Kevin Miller, from Mopar, attended, as did Winston Cup drivers Jimmy Spencer and Kurt Busch. Las Vegas native Busch raced a Ford Focus Midget for the first time in the Twin-25s support race (see separate race story). Speed Channel taped the races Saturday night for a two-hour telecast on May 1. The Lewis-PRE organization made the Twin 25s an entertaining show by having the PVQMRA (local quarter midget racing association in Pomona Valley) racing for fans from 8:00 a.m to 3:00 p.m in the track's east parking lot. PRE flew Indianapolis striking blonde twins Katie and Kylie Huffman, the IRP Twin 25 trophy girls, by helicopter into Irwindale's third-mile infield during the autograph session. PRE also hired a Loomis-Fargo armored truck with a two patrol car escort from the California Highway Patrol to bring the huge facsimile $50,000 check to the front straight during pre-race ceremonies. The Huffman twins walked with the check in front of the grandstand and back to Hines in 25th position before the start of the second 25 to motivate him even more. Aerial pyrotechnics that took place during the National Anthem, the four-abreast parade laps and following the second 25-lap feature provided spectators additional showmanship. |
