Notes and things from the PRI Show.

If you need a driver for for your sprint car in 2010, give Mickey Kempgens a call.

So we rolled on into the PRI show on Thursday amidst some rather unpleasant weather and the first thing that struck us was the reduction in the size of booths and floor traffic. Now if you know anything about the trade show industry, everyone has taken a major hit, so this was really nothing different.

Then we promptly ran into Mikey Kempgens down on the floor. If you’ve not had the pleasure of meeting Mickey, a nicer person you will not meet. He’s rather soft spoken and lets his right foot do the talking for him.

Unfortunately for Mickey, some changes have been made at Shane Miller Motorsports (more on that in a moment) and Mickey is now looking for a ride for 2010. If you’re a regular listener to the podcast you know that we’ve spoken very highly of the progress Mickey made this year as he’s fast, smooth and easy on the equipment. So if you need a driver for 2010, you should put Mickey at the top of your list. And for the record, Mickey had nothing but nice things to say about Shane Miller and his operation. It’s just “one of them deals.”

We spent some time over in the Bell booth looking at a new lid for our Editor at Speed and during that time Steve Park and Rick Francis were in the house as well. Some other sprint car peeps we talked to were all abuzz about Tony Stewart Racing. It seems you can’t go anywhere these days without some TSR rumors, so here goes…first one we heard was Kraig Kinser to the #11 with Quaker State and The King to TSR in the #20. We found that one hard to believe since Donny is a J&J man and Steve is a Maxim man. So we poked around and then heard Kraig is in at Steve Kinser Racing (go figure) and that TSR was going to have a working relationship of some sort with Steve, but he’s still driving for himself. It just gets wackier by the day.

Joey "The Ace" Aguilar and Tommy Nichols, the face of Shane Miller Motorsports for 2010.

So on Friday, our own Factory Driver Flyin’ Ryan Partin was in tow and the first person we ran into was…Shane Miller himself, and his drivers for 2010. That’s right, looking all dapper in their team gear was Joey “The Ace” Aguilar and Tommy Nichols. Tommy was clean shaven so we couldn’t attempt any more Joe Nemecheck jokes. As of now, it’s not set in stone whether the team will run all of the TBARA series, or race wherever they see fit in 2010, much like they did in 2009. One thing is for certain, keep an eye on this team as we’re sure they will be the center of attention when they roll into the pits.

Shane Miller is a great team owner and does a lot for sprint car racing here in Florida and we wish them nothing but the best in 2010. Hopefully Joey will continue to bring Orange Crush soda to the track with him in 2010…

Then we mosied on our way on down to the Triple X Race Products booth to take a look at Flyin’ Ryan’s

Ryan Partin with a picture of...Ryan Partin.

car for 2010 since it was literally sitting in their booth. On our way over we ran into Bryn Gohn and Matt Kurtz. Matt’s a pretty quiet guy, that or everyone looks quiet next to Bryn! Just funnin’ Bryn. Bryn is heading back to Pennsylvania Posse land for 2010 and got together with Rod George late this year and the team has appeared to gel so hopefully we’ll see some strong runs for Bryn in 2010.

Then we finally made our way into the Triple X booth and there was the pretty new picture of our very own factory driver displayed prominently amongst the other champions that drove a Triple X chassis in 2010. We even scoped out their mini sprint on the off chance that our Editor at Speed, “The Hot Foot” Brian Penrose decides to make a chassis change.

We’ll have a dedicated post for the big Ryan Partin announcement that became official while we were there in the booth, so gigantic it require its own topic. Suffice it to say we are very happy for Ryan.

Webmaster Todd with the Jim Beam #7 driven by Robby Gordon.

Well, this picture has nothing to do with sprint car racing, but as much I do not care about NA$CAR any more, my favorite driver for the vast majority of my life has been Robby Gordon. I still recall fondly his bursting on the CART scene with Chip Ganassi and then AJ Foyt and all of the hijinks and brilliant drives that ensued.

And when Jim Beam came on board with Robby, well that was a match made in heaven for me as I could then easily justify many purchases of Jim Beam Black in the name of supporting my favorite driver. Sadly Jim Beam is going away for 2010, so this was my last chance to get a picture of me with the Jim Beam car.

While we made the rounds visiting all of the fine product sponsors involved with Wendy Mathis Racing (K&N, Joe Gibbs Driven, Bell, Permatex) we also ran into Ben Fritz and Ben’s dad and also the parents of Amanda Ferguson, finer people you will not find. Though young Amanda was whisked right past us by KJ Motorsports. You pick on someone for not eating Carolina Slaw Dogs at Ocala with us and then she sicks her body guards on us! Nonetheless, we hope you did well on your Trigonometry test Amanda and it looks there will be some exciting announcements coming from Amanda’s camp shortly.

Lastly, yes it did suck that the races got rained out at VSP last night – but we’ve got something to cheer you up…more pictures from Gene Marderness! We always consider ourselves blessed when Gene shares photos with us and he sent us some shots from this year’s Knoxville Nationals, including the likes of everyone’s favorite driver Terry McCarl, the Crockernham Express, Jason Myers and many many more.

Click here and enjoy!