This one is very long, with lots of pictures, so get comfortable…

Date: October 23, 2010

Series: Central Florida Wingless Sprints (soon to be USAC Southeast Sprints)

Track: Citrus County Speedway

Admission: $25 for a pit pass, $13 for grandstands, which is still the best deal going.

# of Sprint Cars: 18

Who Won: Mickey Kempgens won Heat #1 and Brian Gingras won Heat #2 and the feature.

Crowd Grade: B+. Not as packed as the last sprint car show I saw at Citrus County, but still a very good sized crowd. They damn sure got their money’s worth, that much I can tell you.

Track Grade: A+. From the admission price to the early start time, to the food, to the super friendly staff, to the no BS race directors, to the early finish time, this is simply my favorite race track to go to for a sprint car race. Just upgrade that website of yours.

Food Ordered: Cheeseburger, coke.

Food Grade: B+. I really wanted the Sausage Hoagie or even the Meatball Hoagie, simply because they were indeed using the term Hoagie, which where I grew up, that’s what you called a sub sandwich. But sadly they were all out by the time I got to the concession stand, which as always was my own fault because I was too busy gathering up notes for this report you are reading. But it was a really good cheeseburger I must say. Probably one of those Bubba Burgers, but those are pretty tasty when cooked right.

Series Grade: A. If two more cars would have showed I could have given them an A+, but the 18 that were there were solid and I would dare say the best top-to-bottom field of cars I’ve seen this year with the CFWS. The other nice thing was that everybody was told they needed to race, no pulling off, and everybody did. The only DNF was Michael Jenkins, who had mechanical issues. There was a DQ, but we’ll touch on that one a bit further down in this report.

FSCF.com Driver of the Race: No contest – “The Commando” Brian Gingras. He swept the night, but the feature race was truly a classic. Gingras spun to bring out the second yellow, along with Tommy Nichols, and had to go to the back on the restart. Gingras came all the way through the field (one yellow helped during this time) and when Troy DeCaire had over three seconds on second place, Gingras ran him down. How many people can say they’ve done that this year? Then after a late race caution Gingras got inside DeCaire for the lead and never looked back. Gingras was like a sprint car Pac Man out there gobbling up other cars like they were little yellow dots. Whatever he did to those Bilsteins on his car sure did work.

Other Notes:

• Let’s get “The Incident” out of the way, since it was all everyone was talking about. Wendy Mathis was in the Nick Manikis #8 for the evening. Early on in the feature Wendy spun coming to the green to bring out the third yellow. After getting push-started, Wendy then pulled back into line to try and get her spot back and the other two cars (Shane Miller and Matthew Hall) wouldn’t give it to her. So this went on for a few laps until officials pointed Wendy to go to the rear. She didn’t. This repeated again. Then the flagman pointed the black flag at her to go to the rear. She didn’t. This repeated again. Then the black flag came out for her (after she eventually dropped to the back) in earnest and they pointed her to pull off the track. She didn’t. This repeated again. Then the two tow trucks fired up and went after her to box her in on the front stretch. They did. She killed the motor and she was towed off the track. The boos from the crowd for her ignoring the black flag turned to cheers as she was towed off the track. In all of my years of going to sprint car races, I have never seen anything like this. To all of you younger sprint car drivers out there, this is not how to conduct yourself. You don’t disobey the race director or ignore black flags. In the name of complete journalistic disclosure, I am a former crew member of hers, so I found this all to be very disappointing.
• I’d like to give an atta-boy to Shane Miller who was out there gassing it all night in the #78. Shane led his heat race for a spell and then in the feature he went three wide for the lead at the drop of the green flag. He spun, but nonetheless that was a bold move. Shane looked good out there and hopefully we’ll see him run the whole CFWS/USAC series next year.
• Shane’s teammate for the evening Tommy Nichols was also a welcome return. Tommy has been plagued with a back injury that has sidelined him most of the season, but he looked healthy and like he’s been hitting the gym and was fast all night. A few spins down on the bottom groove kept Tommy from the sharp end of the grid. It was good to see Tommy back out on the track again.
• Terry DeCaire rolled out two cars for the night – one for Mickey Kempgens and one for Matthew Hall. I didn’t think it was possible to make the #41 look any better (it’s always been one of my favorite looking cars) but it looks even better with our decal on it…
• This was the first time I’ve met Matt and a nicer guy you will not meet, same with his wife Sarah. Matt grew up in Indiana so this was a new track, new car and a whole new set of drivers, so he was just gathering up some seat time to get acclimated for next year.
• Speaking of Mickey Kempgens, he is your 2010 CFWS Champion! “The Smooth Operator” has had a breakout year and picked up his first major championship of any kind. Mickey ran hard all night in the DeCaire Motorsports #41 and will make a great champion for the series.
• “Double G” Gary Gimmler was in the house and hung out at the front end of the grid all night until drifting back a little at the end of the feature. Gary’s crew are a great bunch of guys and we hope they’ll hit the CFWS/USAC trail next year. The #29 is a beautiful piece of machinery.
• That Gingras spin on lap two? It wasn’t because of contact from Gary Gimmler (they never touched) but from Brian’s arm restraint getting stuck while he was turning.
• Michael Jenkins had a rough night, with throttle linkage issues keeping him from running both the heat and the feature. Hopefully they can get it squared away so we can see that Competition Welding chassis out there running.
• Skeeter Faulconer brought a car for himself and one for Frankie Hurst and they ran all night. Skeeter is a good guy and some day I’d like to see Frankie on sticker tires with a big buck motor under the hood to see what he could do.
• Troy DeCaire was strong (as usual) all night, but the car got loose on him as the feature wore on and he couldn’t get it to rotate off the center well enough to get back after Gingras after the pass for the lead. Look for Troy out on the USAC Silver Crown trail for 2011.
• One of these days Dennis Misuraca will get that left front wheel planted, he assures us. He also had some inexplicable tire growth in the feature. We might want to organize an exorcism to chase away the demons in that car. In addition to stealing my glasses, his daughter Logan also drew a picture of the track and showed her dad where he was getting loose and the tire was coming up. Not bad for a crew chief in sixth grade.
• Dakotah Stephens was back in action, with big slides coming out of turn two. I also got to talk to Dakotah’s dad for a brief spell while I was getting up to speed on the USAC outlook for next year.
• “Slick” Ric Voisey’s car was also spotted with one of our decals. I’m still hoping one of these days he’ll stroll up to the driver’s meeting and break out with, “whether you like it, or don’t like it, learn to love it, because it’s the best thing going today…WHOO!”
• Of course the biggest news of the night was that Colin Cabre’s dad was one of the three Doink the Clowns, the other two of course being Steve Keirn and Matt Bourne. More to come later in the week…
• Overall, optimism was very high in the pits with the USAC announcement. It would appear there really won’t be any rule changes, the engine and car rules should stay the same, we’ll just see way more races and tracks for 2011. If they can bring 20-25 solid cars at tracks all over the state, that will be pretty awesome.

Race Reporter: Todd Michaels

First up is the photo gallery courtesy of Gary “Walk Quietly But Carry A Big” Johnson.

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