Archive for Race Reports
May
08
TBARA Race Report – 05.05.12. Now with pictures!
Posted by: | CommentsThe TBARA returned to one of my favorite tracks of all time, I owed my son a sprint car race due to all of my business travel lately, so we all loaded up and headed to Citrus County Speedway for some sprint car racing.
Game on!
DATE: May 5, 2012
SERIES: TBARA
TRACK: Citrus County Speedway
ADMISSION: $22 for one adult, one senior and one child. You can’t beat that with a stick.
FOOD ORDERED: Chocolate Ice Cream, Cheese Fries, Cheeseburger, Popcorn and Pizza. The ice cream and cheese fries were for the boy, the cheeseburger for me and the pizza for me mum. For some inexplicable reason me mum got an enormous bag of popcorn that is resting comfortably in the back of my car. Sprite, Coke and Mello Yello were the drinks of the evening.
FOOD GRADE: B-. The ice cream is el yummo and quite the steal at the price point. The cheeseburger and cheese fries were pretty good too but the pizza was a tad lacking.
NUMBER OF SPRINT CARS: 18.
WHO WON: Heat wins went to Dude Teate, Jimmy Alvis Jr., Stan Butler. Feature win went to TBARA defending champion Johnny Gilbertson.
Your podium, left to right, Larry Brazil Jr. came home third, Johnny Gilbertson was your winner and Shane Butler came home second. Photo by Photos by Crawford.
SERIES GRADE: C. The TBARA brought 18 cars, which is up from Desoto and Punta Gorda, but only eight were running at the end of the feature.
CROWD GRADE: A. The stands were pretty darn full I must say, which was nice to see for a TBARA event these days. Also, the week prior Shane and Stan Butler brought their sprint cars out to the track to help raise awareness, so well done to the Butlers.
FSCF.com DRIVER OF THE RACE: Johnny Gilbertson. I truthfully thought Shane Butler would run away with it after Dude Teate broke, but the man we call Gilby put down a superfly power move to take the lead from Butler and never looked back for a dominating win. That’s two in a row for the defending champ.
Once Johnny Gilbertson put the winning pass on Shane Butler he checked off into the distance and picked up the win. Photo by Photos by Crawford.
FSCF.com HARD LUCK AWARD: As is generally the case, this one is easy and unfortunately goes to Dude Teate. Making his first TBARA start of the year, the Dude won his heat and looked to have one of the strongest cars out there but unfortunately broke early on in the feature, while leading, to boot. Sorry Dude, but it was nice to see you back in competition once again.
REST OF THE RACING GRADE: For everyone but the modifieds, I give them an A. For the modifieds, they get an F. The sportsmen had about 25 cars and had a great feature race. The four cylinder class also featured some great racing. We even got to see Stan Butler driving a dwarf car.The one thing I like about Citrus County is that the vast majority of the drivers have a lot of respect for each other and there is generally some good give and take. More on the modifieds below…
OTHER NOTES:
- Heat #3 was very entertaining with Shane and Stan Butler on the front row together. I thought Stan would just roll over and let Shane run off with it, but as with most things in life, I was way off in my thinking. Stan and Shane ran side-by-side through the turns for a few laps until Stan finally pulled away for the heat win. I was laughing my head off I was so entertained by all of this.
It was a Butler family affair in Heat #3. Photo by Photos by Crawford.
- Mickey Kempgens run of good fortune came to an abrupt end against the turn four wall and we all held our breath until we saw Mickey was alright. Mickey was behind the wheel of the #75 we’re accustomed to seeing Darrin Miller pilot and looked like he had his hands full with it in his heat race. From my vantage point I couldn’t see what happened in the feature, but the end result was Mickey and Jimmy Alvis Jr. in the wall and both were done for the night.
- As usual, Larry Brazil Jr.was high entertainment, scaring my mother every time he came sliding out of four and seeing how close he could get to the wall. If there is one thing that I’ve learned over the years by watching Larry, he loves to nail the throttle coming out of four and it doesn’t matter what track it is.
Larry Brazil Jr. works to the outside of "Slick" Ric Voisey. Photo by Photos by Crawford.
- Friend of the website and ROTY contender Rex “Boneman” Hollinger had engine leak issues that plagued him from the get go so we never really got to see him pedal his #85 in anger.
- Move of the night went to Mark Gimmler. Mark was dicing with Stan Butler for fourth place and they were gingerly trying to get around the slower car of Jason Bradford. After two laps or so, they had enough of this and going into turn three Stan shot high and Mark shot low and into the turn they went three wide, I held my breath…and Mark emerged in front of all of them.
Mark Gimmler takes Jason Bradford to the outside. Photo by Photos by Crawford.
- Those of you accustomed to seeing Ben Fritz in his bright red #16 probably had to do a double take as he was behind the wheel of the #37 this evening.
- I saw Bo Hartley walking the stands and it drives me insane that he’s not out on the track competing.
- When it was all said and done, Johnny Gilbertson had lapped up to fourth place and eight cars (I believe) were still running when the checkers fell. Hopefully after May is over the TBARA can get their car counts back up.
- Championship contender John Gilbert Jr. had a tough night, spinning in his heat race and then ending up in the fence in the feature.
- Spend two bucks and get the track program at Citrus County, it’s really well done and you get a ticket for drawings for prizes.
- I’d like to thank Johnny Gilbertson for name-dropping our website in his victory lane speech and I’d also like to thank Shane Butler for throwing his K&N hat to my son. My son wore it to sleep, to lunch Sunday and also to his daycare every day so far this week. So big ups to “The Bushnell Bullet” for cultivating the young fans.
- Barring the modified debacle, Citrus County once again proved why it is my favorite pavement track. Cheap admission, friendly staff, a huge family seating area, great racing with drivers that race each other hard but clean, and this was the first time I’ve been witness to a long night of racing, but that was due to the modifieds.
Jason Bradford leads Frankie Hurst. Photo by Photos by Crawford.
- So I’ve been going to see modifieds race on both pavement and dirt for about thirty years now and I really like modifieds quite a bit, but that was probably one of the worst “races” I’ve ever witnessed. Drivers intentionally dumping each other, one driver intentionally stopping on the track to bring out a yellow after he got moved up the track, multiple spins by one driver, it was terrible. But I guess the worst part for me was that the driver that intentionally stopped on track to bring out a yellow, then dumped another driver for yet another yellow, got a major warning by officials when he rightfully should have been parked, ended up winning. This “race” went on for almost forty minutes, this with track officials mercifully cutting it short. Sadly quite a few fans around me left before the sprints came out because now it was late and they had enough.
- I really enjoyed the sportsmen race, as did my son and he generally hates stock cars. Live and learn.
RACE REPORTER: Todd Michaels
Apr
10
Top Gun Sprint Series Race Report – 04.07.12
Posted by: | CommentsIt was a dirt sprint car race that promised a full field of cars, our Factory Driver was in the house and the weather was perfect, how could I not go to Bubba Raceway Park Saturday night?
Game on!
DATE: April 7, 2012
SERIES: Top Gun Sprints Series
ADMISSION: $30 for a pit pass, which I’ve slowly grown used to at Bubba Raceway Park. But I will say that they have FINALLY upgraded the men’s lavatories in the pits, installing “pee troughs” in there, thus not making it the claustrophobic nightmare it’s been for years. So if the extra five bucks was put to that, I say that’s money well spent.
FOOD ORDERED: Get this – a zuber dog with buffalo cheese dip on it and cheese sticks with marinara.
FOOD GRADE: A-. I swear to God/Allah/Buddha/Dave Steele I was in hot dog heaven. Two of my favorite food groups were combined into one delicious package. If they weren’t so f’ing expensive I would have ordered two of them. But the cheese sticks were very, very tasty. Also of food note was the big old grill front and center by the main admission area where they were cooking up hot dogs and hamburgers. I’m still not nuts about the food prices, but I will say this, Bubba Raceway Park currently has the best food offerings in my cheese-centric world. Ask Penrose how much I enjoyed that hot dog creation, it probably made him uncomfortable how much I was enjoying it. I also shared my cheese sticks with members of the Flying 14 team and they all gave them high marks.
DRINKS ORDERED: Pabst Blue Ribbon.
DRINKS GRADE: B. The price is a little steep for PBR, but it gets cheaper if you re-use the beer cup they sell you, so I can’t complain about that part of it too much. I’m just glad that PBR is an option. If a track has PBR or Yuengling on tap, really that’s a complete night of good, cheap American beer and some sprint car racing. And the girl selling the beer? Totally hot.
CROWD GRADE: B-. I’ve seen better at BRP and I’ve seen worse. I was somewhat disappointed that the joint wasn’t packed though because this was a high quality show with the modified feature thrown into the mix.
TRACK GRADE: B-. It was almost impossible to see the latter stages of the feature because it turned into a huge dustbowl, but the track was raceable and there was some great action going on, if you could see it. And truth be told a lot of that dust was because the sprint cars kept going lower and lower and lower. BUT I think this is a good thing because last year the track was narrowed up and that didn’t work too well for the sprint cars and now they have a lot more track to work with, so my hat’s off to BRP in that regard.
NUMBER OF SPRINT CARS: 23.
WHO WON:
Heat 1: Terry Witherspoon
Heat 2: Mark Ruel Jr.
Heat 3: Danny Martin Jr.
Feature: Danny Martin Jr.
SERIES GRADE: A+. This was the strongest field of Top Gun sprint cars I’ve seen over the last two years. There were a few slower drivers out there, but their stuff was good and it was more about them learning the ropes and getting seat time, but the quality of the cars overall was outstanding and there were 20+ sprint cars in the pits. In this economy, that’s good stuff right there.
FSCF.com DRIVER OF THE RACE: Andrew Griffin. Andrew won the KSE Hardcharger Award and deserved it. To the best of my knowledge (at least of the Top Gun races I’ve been to) this was Andrew’s best Top Gun finish. He was helped by some of the early front runners falling out, but once he worked himself up into the top five he stayed there the rest of the race. I also strongly considered Stephen Darvalics for this award, but Andrew gets the nod.
FSCF.COM HARD LUCK AWARD: As is generally the case, this one is easy and unfortunately goes to “The Bloodhound” Brett O’Donnell. I’ve said it before and I will say it again – Brett is positively electrifying to watch. When he gets a whiff of the front, he is on it. On the second restart he came rocketing from the second row and stormed into the lead. He then held off serious charges from Danny Martin Jr. and Matt Kurtz for the lead. If Martin came around the outside of Brett off of four, Brett would stuff it down on the bottom in one and emerge back in front again. As a sprint car fan, watching the three of them fight for the lead was a thing of absolute beauty. Unfortunately it all came to an end when they hit lapped traffic and Brett tangled with Tanner Witherspoon down in one and ended up flipping. As much as it pains me to say it, it was just one of them deals. Tanner was going slow and held his line, Brett was driving his guts out to stay in front and had to dive into every available opening to stay in front of Martin Jr. and Kurtz and it came to an unfortunate end, especially since we know, as Joe Guzzi pointed out in our 10 Questions, the team is very short on spares. I really think we were going to see Brett’ s first Top Gun win Saturday night.
OTHER NOTES:
- Terry Witherspoon was a rocket in his heat and never once put a wheel wrong to pick up the win. Unfortunately his feature came to a quick end when he came coasting to a stop shortly after the green.
- So far this year Jimmy Ballew has used up all the bad luck I think he wants to use up. This time a broken spindle on the right front brought his feature to an abrupt end. This was after his big time wreck last time out at Bubba Raceway Park. A nicer guy you won’t meet, so hopefully some good luck will come his way next time out.
- I spotted “OTG” Tyler Godwin working down in the Tony Agin pits Saturday night. Tyler said we’ll be seeing back behind the wheel of a sprint car in the not too distant future.
- Our Factory Driver Flyin’ Ryan Partin had a rough feature. He led most of his heat race and Danny Martin Jr. got by him at the end, but this was Ryan’s kind of track – the bottom was the place to be. With the attrition at the front, Ryan should have been in the cat bird’s seat, but he suffered a flat right rear under caution and had to change it and tag the field. He fought back to tenth, but a second place finish was easily in the cards.
- What can I say about Danny “The Hammer” Martin Jr. that hasn’t already been said? It seems no matter what car he finds himself in, he’s up front. Saturday was no different and when most drivers struggled to make the top work, Danny seemed to make it work at will and he is a complete master at working lapped traffic.
- “The Jacksonville Jet” Matt Kurtz lived up to his nickname and was once again lightning quick until he coasted to a stop under a caution and it was game over, unfortunately.
- Stephen Darvalics put in a somewhat quiet evening and came home with a well-deserved second place finish in the Shaw house car. Each time Steven is in the Shaw car he looks more and more comfortable and I would suspect a win is right around the corner this season.
- “The Peruvian Outlaw” Mark Ruel Jr. was a monster in his heat race and just completely yarded everyone and was getting out of turn four like no one’s business. Mark kind of stumbled a little on some of the starts in the feature, but still stayed up front all night and was running second for quite a spell until Darvalics got around him toward the end. This was easily Mark’s finest hour in Top Gun competition and his family operation had a very fine accounting of themselves and should be very proud of the job they did. I still want to see a flag of Peru on the side of the car though.
- “Mean” Gene Lasker‘s engine woes continue, unfortunately. The car looked good in hot laps but then he abruptly pulled in toward the end of his heat race and didn’t answer the bell for the feature. They might need to hold an exorcism for that motor because it’s just not cooperating at the moment.
- Kerry Gilbert, sporting a new MAACO decal on his top wing, put in a fine workman-like drive to bring home a nice seventh place finish. Look for Kerry’s 10 Questions shortly.
- I will say that Bubba Raceway Park is rapidly becoming the best dirt track to take in a sprint car race in the state of Florida. There is now a nice bar area, complete with band playing music, the pits bathrooms have been upgraded, there is PBR on tap and the food seems to be getting better as well. Penrose and I enjoyed the tables over by the band area so we could stand and drink our PBRs in comfort. BTLS is certainly working hard to improve the overall experience, and compared to last year, he’s come a long way.
- There were over 100 cars in total in the pits and a ton of good modifieds. The fans got their dollar’s worth for the evening, that’s for sure.
- My only knock on the evening is that things were very late to get started and Danny Martin Jr. technically won the race on Easter Sunday as the feature started shortly before midnight. I didn’t get home until 2:15 am, a very long evening indeed, but I had a thoroughly awesome time regardless.
RACE REPORTER: Todd Michaels
Feb
15
Bubba Raceway Park Race Report – 02.11.12
Posted by: | CommentsFIRST UP – The 410s are in action tonight (Wednesday) as the All Star Circuit of Champions hits the track at Volusia Speedway Park. Given these next few nights could be the only time you see sprint cars at VSP this year, we high suggest you high tail it over there.
Doing a separate race report for each series would be laborious given that we’re knee deep in SpeedWeeks and the information will be coming fast and furious, so I’m combining the USAC and FMSA action into one report.
DATE: February 11, 2012
SERIES: USAC Sprint Cars and Florida Mini Sprints Association (FMSA).
TRACK: Bubba Raceway Park.
ADMISSION PRICE: $40 for a pit pass. While that sounds steep, this is SpeedWeeks, it is USAC and a Top Gun pit pass runs me $30 at Bubba Raceway Park, so I expected it to be forty clams.
FOOD ORDERED: N/A. I was actually suffering from food poisoning (which had nothing to do with the track for the record) so I wasn’t able to get the chili cheese dog as per my usual BRP diet. Sorry.
DRINKS ORDERED: Hot Chocolate.
DRINKS GRADE: A. It was very, very cold out so the hot chocolate hit the spot and for the record it was the Carnation Rich Chocolate variety, which is good stuff. Had this been Swiss Miss or some generic brand you would be starting at a different grade, I assure you.
CROWD GRADE: A-. It wasn’t top to bottom full, but given the temperatures in the 40s, the grandstands were pretty darn full. This might be the biggest crowd I’ve seen at BRP for a sprint car race.
TRACK GRADE: Incomplete. The track conditions were puzzling for competitors and fans alike. I’ll give you some examples. On Thursday, for hot laps and the beginning of qualifying the track was great. By the time qualifying was into the last ten cars or so they didn’t have a prayer, but in the features the surface wasn’t too bad. Then in the feature the track surface was just god awful, probably the worst I’ve seen at BRP. Then on Saturday for hot laps and qualifying the track surface was awesome, with the track record getting positively obliterated. Then come feature time USAC competitors and officials and BRP got into it about the track surface. The feature Saturday wasn’t real good until the very last lap, with minimal passing throughout the field throughout the race. Obviously the track surface can be great as we saw during qualifying Saturday, but consistency needs to be addressed because it’s a bad deal when you can have an awesome surface and an awful surface all in the same night. Hopefully the track can get it right because the layout is great for wingless sprints.
USAC WHO WON: Feature win went to “The Hawk” Darren Hagen, with heat wins going to Casey Shuman, Brady Bacon, Chase Stockton and Bud Kaeding.
FMSA WHO WON: Feature win went to Luke Thomas, with heat wins going to Thomas, Eddie Moss Jr. and Jesse Teed.
USAC DRIVER OF THE RACE: This is a very tough one. On one hand, Bryan Clauson made a game of it while everyone else had trouble passing in the feature. On the other hand Justin Grant was just electric in qualifying and his heat race. But I’m going with Darren Hagen for a couple of reasons. First, the Hoffman Racing entries were rockets each night and Hagen in particular just had this knack for getting off the bottom of turn four and carrying a bunch of forward bite down the straight so he could get inside of people in turn one. When I was getting his autograph for my son, a fan relayed to him that the Clausons were down there jawing about how they touched coming to the finish, to which Hagen replied, “well I won, it’s my trophy, but if it will make him feel better he can have his picture taken with it, but it’s still mine.” Add that to his monster drive and he’s my Driver of the Race.
FMSA DRIVER OF THE RACE: I’m going with out-of-state invader Jim Young with this one. Jim comes down every year with his red #8, sometimes all by himself, sometimes with maybe one person in tow, but this very likable gentleman is always fast and always smooth. The 2012 SpeedWeeks edition of Jim’s travels have been no different as he came home second both nights in the feature. Honorable mention goes to Gavin Thomas who was fast in both the Jesse Teed entry and the Todd’s Tomatoes entry.
USAC HARD LUCK AWARD: This one is a little tough because the USAC guys just don’t wreck or really run into each other much, but I’ll go with Chris Windom. On Thursday he tagged the berm in his heat race and flipeed, then the tow truck bounced his car going into the pits. Somehow they got everything fixed for the B Main and Chris worked his way into a transfer spot and then he got bumped down in turn four and when he spun he got tagged by another car. Then Windom’s Saturday night was largely forgettable.
FMSA HARD LUCK AWARD: Unfortunately this is an easy one and it goes to series champ David Pleaugh. David broke on the first lap of Thursday’s feature and was done. Then on Saturday David was battling for the lead with Luke Thomas when Thomas got into Pleaugh on the front stretch and Pleaugh went for a wild ride through the infield and he was once again done for the night.
USAC RACE NOTES:
- Hoffman Racing was back with a vengeance. Last year was rather forgettable, but this year the team brought a Chalk chassis for Darren Hagen and a Triple X for Brady Bacon and both were fast. This team is old school, so much so our Factory Driver remarked that their trailer looks straight out of 1985. This bunch of old schoolers are super nice guys and it was great to see them in victory lane again.
- Bryan Clauson gets mad props for his last lap charge at Darren Hagen, going to the outside in the last turn, going to the outside on the run to the checkered flag, falling but .092 seconds short. The two touched at the stripe with Clauson suffering some front end damage, but such is life going for the win.
- Qualifying was positively electric with Brady Bacon first putting down a 14.283, then Levi Jones dropped the track record to a 14.123, but then Justin Grant obliterated the track record with a 14.018. Watching Grant’s lap had me holding my breath watching how he manned up that car through turns one and two.
- Damion Gardner won Thursday but was a shocking non-factor Saturday night, though he sure as heck was trying to come up through the field. My Gardner t-shirt is still the coolest t-shirt I own though.
- Florida did have some representation with Mark Broughman, who moved here from Michigan last year. While Mark was the slowest car out there, he gave it a shot and that’s what racing is about. I’ll also give him an atta-boy because he smoothed out his lines dramatically as the night went on and as the leaders came up to lap him in his heat and the B Main he pulled off immediately. More drivers that are off the pace should do that.
- Will USAC be back? At the moment it doesn’t appear so. I hope USAC and BRP can work out their spat because we really need USAC here in Florida during SpeedWeeks. These are the best non-wing drivers in the country and watching them at work is a thing of beauty.
FMSA NOTES:
- Eddie Moss Jr. was a rocket Thursday but ran into issues Saturday night. His new HYPER just sucks down through the turns and was generally the fastest thing out there.
- Jesse Teed’s new Triple X is a cool piece of machinery, I highly suggest checking it out. The names Jesse and Gavin were on the side of it and you could tell who was driving it by which name had a green x over it for the night.
- Both Teed and Moss Jr. had issues Saturday night, sidelining their efforts early in the feature.
- Luke Thomas was predictably fast but it’s a shame Saturday’s win was tainted by the contact for the lead with David Pleaugh. Thomas has been a rocket at East Bay in years past.
- The Todd’s Tomatoes team was very fast both nights, with both Dirk Miller and Gavin Thomas running toward the sharp end of the field.
- Sheldon Kinser Jr. had a scary moment on Saturday night when something broke on the car and he took a hard right turn into the front stretch. Thankfully he was alright.
- Austin Craddock had a great Thursday night but ended up on the hook after a big wreck Saturday night. Craddock was on the outside of David Hall as Hall was completing the pass down the back stretch and I just had a bad feeling that if Craddock didn’t back out of it something bad would happen, and it did.
- It was also announced that the FMSA will be running a wingless show at some point this year at BRP.
- Nick Snyder in the 14s was very fast Saturday night, looking much better than his Thursday run.
RACE REPORTER: Todd Michaels