Date: 06/26/2010

Track: East Bay Raceway Park ( Tampa, FL )

Series: East Bay Sprints

Admission:
Pit Pass – $25

# of Sprint Cars: 15

Who Won:
Heat 1 – Tim George
Heat 2 – Danny “The Hammer” Martin
Feature – DANNY MARTIN JR

Crowd Grade: B. It wasn’t the best crowd that I’ve seen at East Bay, but it was fairly healthy. East Bay continues to pull really strong car counts in most of their classes. I think I counted 26 cars roll out for the 4 Cylinder Bomber race. You gotta keep the crowd interested to keep them coming back, and East Bay is doing a good job at that. But who knows, it might not be the car counts at all, maybe it’s the deviled crab that keeps them coming back. It was the deciding factor for me to drive from Lake City to Tampa. When the “Bushnell Bullet” asked me if I wanted to go to East Bay after the downpour at Lake City, I said, “heck yeah, I’ll go get one of their famous crab rolls!”

Track Grade: B+. Now I’m no dirt track aficionado by any means, but the track looked better than I’ve seen there in a really long time. No ruts. No huge mini sprint swallowing holes. No major bumps. No mud slung everywhere. And not so dusty that you couldn’t see the flagman. I’m not sure if the tide was just right, or maybe the track crew just did their homework, but kudos to East Bay for a really well prepared track.

Food Ordered: Deviled Crab

Food Grade: A++. This succulent morsel of divinity was so worth the trip from Lake City! If you’ve been to East Bay and you haven’t tried this delicious masterpiece, you’re missing out. If you haven’t been to East Bay, then you gotta go just to try the deviled crab. And the racing isn’t bad either. I spoke to the gentleman that was running the pit side concession, I think he said that his brother-in-law owns Kazbor’s, and told him how much I like the crab roll. He was telling me that they get them freshly handmade from a lady at the produce market over on Hillsborough Ave in Tampa. She even makes mini crab rolls, perfect for your next get together. I gave him one of our fancy new FloridaSprintCarFans.com decals to display on his Coca-Cola cooler in the concession stand. (Thanks again to MK Designs – the official graphics supplier of FSCF.com) And if he’s reading this right now, we would love to have Kazbor’s as the official restaurant of FSCF.com. They have some yummy vittles!

Drinks Ordered: Sweet Tea (of course)

Drinks Grade: A. The sweet tea was top notch Saturday night. Probably the best I’ve had at East Bay in a while. They still have some pretty stiff competition from the folks over at Volusia Speedway Park, but they’re a real close second at this point. And the nice thing was the consistency. I had a glass of tea at the grandstand concession and the pit concession, and both were very good. I can’t wait for my next trip to East Bay for the deviled crab and the sweet tea!

Series (Class) Grade: C+. The East Bay Sprints brought 15 cars to the track Saturday for their monthly appearance at the Clay by the Bay. We’ve seen much better car counts there and would like to see that all the time. We definitely missed seeing Gene Lasker back out, but hopefully he’ll have his ship pointed in the right direction soon.

FSCF.com Driver of the Race: Travis Bleimeister. The surprise of the night for me was Travis Bleimeister. I’ve seen Travis several times, going back to the days when he and Paulie Milum were pit pals and neighbors on the backstretch. But Travis has came soooooooo far with his abilities. To my knowledge, he hasn’t been out frequently. Bleimeister did start on the front row, but managed to lead several laps before Danny Martin Jr, who started inside of row 2, finally got by him on lap 8. Even after “The Hammer” was at the point, Bleimeister pulled to the back bumper of Martin Jr and looked like he might challenge for the lead numerous times. Given the experience of “The Hammer,” Bleimeister had nothing to be ashamed of by finishing 2nd.

Other Notes:

- After losing the rock, paper, scissors match against “Webmaster Whiz Kid” and the “Flyin’ Flatfoot”, I was the chosen one deployed to Lake City to cover our very first Central Florida Wingless Sprints race. I was really looking forward to covering this series and possibly getting some insight on when and where we might see them in action soon. My dad and I had made the incredibly long journey to northern Florida when, 8 miles from the track, the skies opened up to a toad strangling down pour. The rain was coming down so heavy and hard that from the north bound lanes of I75, we couldn’t see the south bound lanes. Upon our arrival at the track, the infield resembled a small shallow lake, complete with no wake signs. After watching half of the 20 or so race haulers that had gathered in the infield depart the speedway, we decided to make the even longer trek to south Tampa to get a deviled crab and take in a dirt sprint car race.

- Rich Pratt, in the Meeks Transport Racing #2 machine, had a very impressive run considering his taxi cab experience. Despite battling fuel issues most of the night, Pratt drove to a solid 5th place finish.

- I arrived too late at East Bay to apply any of our fancy smancy FloridaSprintCarFans.com decals to any clean cars. But if anyone would like to display your love for our little site, stop us as we wonder the pits, or drop us a line, and we’ll gladly get one to you.

- Billy Boyd has made a very fast transition from his open wheel modified into the sprint car ranks. Billy posted a very solid 3^rd place drive behind Martin Jr and Bleimeister, keeping 7 time track champion, Tim George, behind him on his way to the checkers.

- Uncharacteristically of the East Bay Sprints, there were only 3 caution flags that flew on the field. All 3 of those were for spun cars. And 13 of the 15 cars that pushed off for the feature finished the 15 circuits.

- We would love to see the East Bay Sprints have a longer feature than 15 laps. Fifteen laps just doesn’t seem fair!

- Visit www.winglesssprints.com for more info about the Central Florida Wingless Sprints series. Club President Michael Rudolph told us that the race that was rained out at Columbia Motorsports Park (Lake City) has been rescheduled for October 30th. Unfortunately, the TBARA is at Desoto Super Speedway the same night. TBARA regulars Joey “The Ace” Aguilar and points leader Shane Butler were both at CMP for the CFWS race. The staff at CFWS are working on scheduling more races for this season and should have those posted soon.

Race Reporter: Josh “Saturday Night is Alright for Fighting, as Long as it’s Chicks with Roller Skates” Wichers