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| Press Release |
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Hanestad wins second biggest title of his career
with Silver Dollar Wingless Nationals The “Hammer” holds of former champion Schank and the professor Jimmy Sills for win By Bill Sullivan |
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OCTOBER 14, 2007 --- It was the fall of 1989 when Darrell
Hanestad stood in victory lane to accept the biggest win of his racing career,
the Gold Cup Race of Champions. Eighteen years later Hanestad became the winner
of Silver Dollar Speedway’s newest fall classic, the third annual Wingless
Nationals.
“The Gold Cup is by far the biggest win for me and it always will be,” said Hanestad. “But I have to say this definitely second on my list. This is a special race for us and we really wanted to win it the last two years but just never quite had the car and the starting spot to get it done. Tonight we did it and it’s great to be standing here with a win like this.” Saturday’s event was originally scheduled to be a two-day event. However, a rain storm on Friday forced promoter John Padjen to cancel the first night of competition and pack all of the action into one full night of racing, and an action packed full night of competition it surely was. Sixty seven cars were tightly squeezed into the pit area to compete in an event that featured and interesting point format and had its share of wheel to racing and mishaps from the early green flags of the night. Due to the car count, qualifying was performed in a cluster fashion with three cars taking to the track simultaneously. Entering the event Hanestad was the track record holder at Silver Dollar Speedway with a 14:012 that was posted back in 2005. This year, the top three qualifiers all beat that previous number, one of which was Hanestad. Defending race champion Terry Schank Jr. of Antioch holds the new record of 13:541. Hanestad was second quick with a 13:708 while Marc Mackay of Cameron Park was third with a 13:964. Two red flags flew during qualifying. The first was for Tim Sherman Jr. of Rocklin who took a wild ride off of turns three and four. It took several minutes for track paramedics to remove Sherman from the car. He eventually climbed into the ambulance under his own power and was observed on site and later released. Todd Miller of Lafayette was the second red flag during qualifying when he took flight off of turn two without injury. Saturday’s program offered accumulative points for qualifying and heat races as well as passing points for the preliminary events to determine the feature event line ups. In the 30-lap A-feature, R.C Smith of nearby Biggs started on the pole with the veteran former USAC Silver Crown champion gone driving instructor Jimmy Sills of Elverta on the outside. The second row consisted of Hanestad on the inside with Schank on the outside aboard Matt Fontaine’s #2x that had won both previous Wingless Nationals. At the waving of the green flag Sills powered around the high side of Smith to take the initial lead and was joined in the front of the field with three laps complete when Hanestad overtook Smith on the inside of turns three and four. Sills stretched his lead to several car lengths over Hanestad but a red flag flew with 6 laps down for Justin Funkhouser of Paradise who rolled over in turn two. On the restart the race looked like a classic Northern Auto Club event with veteran drivers Sills and Hanestad dueling for the lead, racing side by side on several occasions, both using the high and low lines of the track. On the 12th circuit, Hanestad came out of the fourth turn with the momentum to overtake Sills for the lead while Schank maintained the third position watching the two talented veterans duel in front of him, awaiting and error by either to possibly become the first two time winner of the event. With 23 laps down Schank went to the inside of turn two to pull beside Sills and passed for the lead as they traveled down the backstretch just before a yellow flag flew for winged racing star Brett Miller of Chico. Miller’s night of wingless racing ended with a broken front end in turn one. Miller’s yellow flag was happy sight for Hanestad who was in heavy lapped traffic at the time and nearly lost his lead over Schank when he struck a deep hole in turn four and slid sideways towards the front stretch wall. “I’m usually one who likes non stop racing,” said Hanestad. “I hit that hole out there and the car went sideways and I thought it was all over because I knew those guys were right there. I was so happy to see that yellow flag, it might have saved me.” In the final laps Hanestad maintained his lead although Schank closed in on the lead in the closing moments to finish second between two of California’s best known veteran talents. “We really wanted to win another one of these deals tonight but I couldn’t get it done,” said Schank. “But to race out here with these two old guys was really great. I want to thank Matt Fontaine for another great car this year.” Much like Schank, Sills make light of the age gap between the top runners as well after finishing in third place behind Hanestad and Schank. “This was great tonight, running with Darrell was like old times out here,” said Sills. “Us old driving instructors have to actually get out and race once in awhile, otherwise my students start thinking I’m just some old guy that doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I need to keep them believing in me.” In preliminary action Saturday night Miller won the B-feature. Josh Bates of Carmichael won the C-main event and David Goodwill won the D-feature. Heat races were won by Kyle Hirst of Elk Grove, Cody Myers of Brown’s Valley, R.C. Smith, Tyler Wolf of Redding, Sills and Herman Klein of Sacramento. Silver Dollar Speedway will go dark until March of 2008 when the Mini-Gold Cup will open a new season of racing. The annual awards banquet will take place at Feather Falls Casino on the Saturday following Thanksgiving. Information on that event will be released in the coming days and available at www.johnpadjenmotorsports.com where you can also find complete results of Saturday’s race. |
