Last time you saw Haulin' Collin Cabre in victory lane in the Midwest, it was in this car. This year will it be in a Diablo?

This just in – Florida’s Haulin’ Collin Cabre will be piloting a Steele Performance Driver Development Diablo with Sam Pierce Chevrolet sponsorship for the entire 2012 Must See Racing Xtreme Sprint Series. Given how quickly Haulin’ Collin got up to speed in Florida and the Midwest in 2011, now armed with a shiny new Diablo at his disposal and the brainpower located in the Steele Performance Parts shop, well, we’re predicting a very exciting season for the MSRXSS bunch.

Couple this with two-time defending MSRXSS champion Troy DeCaire in the #91 Puglio entry and the Florida flag could be showing up in victory lane on a regular basis throughout the Midwest, Panhandle region and even New York state.

Since videos on Fridays are a tradition around here, we would be remiss in not sharing a video for the late Donnie Ray Crawford.

And don’t forget that Haulin’ Collin’s dad is the one and only “Lightning” Lou Perez.

As Kyle Welchance alluded to below, a new race for the dirt sprint cars has popped up out of nowhere. We were contacted by racer Geoff(rey) Styner who states that Hendry County Motorsports Park will run the sprint cars on February 25.

The engine rules follow Top Gun Sprint Series and Florida Sprint Car Association (or OSCA if you like…) rule books and there is an open tire rule in effect.

The following purse is in effect with ten sprint cars checked in and racing.

Purse Breakdown:

$800

$500

$300

$250

$250

$250

$250

$200 – start

Got more questions? Call the track at (863) 983-3478. You can also follow some threads online at Real Racin USA, Florida Flag Stand and the FSCA Message Board.

Moving over to the pavement, if you’ve got a teenager that wants to pilot a winged pavement sprint car, then you are in luck.

This TBARA support series is for drivers age 14 and up. All cars will be required to meet TBARA rules and will have throttle stops in place so cars can not have more than 1/2 throttle response. Plans are for the youngsters to get on the race track 1-2 times per TBARA event.

Intrigued? Give Terry DeCaire a call at 813-376-9464 to learn more.

And you thought we were going to tell you about a training class for elementary school kids in mini sprints…

The Chili Bowl was once again won by someone with the last name of Swindell, though not the one that our staff are big fans of. Note to Sammy – bring more shirts to Volusia with you this year, we need new ones…

Florida’s Travelin’ Troy DeCaire was in competition at this year’s Chili Bowl and had an up and down go of things. Troy had a fast car Friday but started 15th in his feature and raced  his way up to 7th and got into a scrum with the cars around him and incurred some damage to the car. Undeterred the car was fixed and Troy was back under way Saturday feeling good about things as the car was fast. Troy got a good jump in his race and things were looking up until a car turned over right in front of Troy and he had to jam on the brakes and came to a stop. This meant starting at the rear on the restart and worked his way up to seventh, but unfortunately that wasn’t good enough for a transfer spot.

Congrats once again to Troy DeCaire for even being in the Chili Bowl and representing Florida once again.

Now the really big race was Friday night at the Lil’ 500 go kart track in Maitland. Your Webmaster and Editor at Speed were joined by 2011 TBARA champion Johnny Gilbertson, dirt hot shoe “The Jacksonville Jet” Matt Kurtz, sprint car all-arounder Matt Tiffany and race organizer and Team Gilby TBARA driver Rex “Boneman” Hollinger. There were plenty of others including track photographers Robert Winger and Butch Crawford, fendered drivers and so on and so forth, so despite the cold temperatures a very good time was had by all. I would also dare say this was some of the best racing the event has seen yet with lots of clean racing going on.

Matt Tiffany takes our website staff to school as he goes three wide down on the bottom.

In the background you can see your Webmaster desperately trying to run down Top Gun competitor "The Jacksonville Jet" Matt Kurtz, to no avail.

Our Editor at Speed "The Hot Foot" Brian Penrose tries to squeeze Webmaster Todd Michaels into the inside wall. Todd's request that track officials give Brian a drive through penalty for poor sportsmanship sadly fell on deaf ears.