Entries from April 2006 ↓

I went to watch the O’Reilly-POWRi & Badger Midget Series co-sanctioned event at Lincoln Speedway on Saturday Night, April 22. This was my first time at the Illinois track. I was in Chicago for work ata conference and when it ended at 4:00 PM I drove straight to Lincoln. When I got there the first thing I noticed is people watching the races from the street. While not a great view, you could skip the $15 admission fee and watch for free from a distance. The track itself was a pretty nice half mile with a decent size set of stands. The only drawback about the track was that it was completely inside what looked to be a 1/2 mile horse track. This meant there was a pretty big distance between the stands and the action. I made it to the track just in time for the second street stock heat. On the schedule was the O’Reilly-POWRi & Badger Midget Series co-sanctioned event , 410 sprints, and the stocks.

There was an amazing number (47) of midgets on site with many top drivers. The midget racing was great all night and I was happy I decided to go. As soon as I noticed 7 (?) time ARDC champion Ray Bull in the pits I knew who I was going to cheer for since he is somewhat local to New Jersey. Actually, there was even a NJ driver as Tom Hessert was racing there as well. While Ray Bull had a great run finishing 5′th, the top prize went to Danny Stranton.

The 410 sprint race was fun, but not outstanding. The same could be said of the street stock race. I left after th race and drove a few hours towards Winchester Indiana for the next days USAC sprint car race there. I was tempted to stay and go to the second O’Reilly-POWRi & Badger Midget Series co-sanctioned event scheduled for Spoon River Speedway in Canton, Ill. It was a good thing I didn’t as apparently everyone showed up but the race didn’t go on as there was no money to pay the purse

My 2006 season race watching stats after Lincoln Speedway:

Races: 9
Tracks: 6 (4 new)
States: 5 (1 new)

Happy Easter everyone. I’m taking the weekend off from going to the races but hope to get to a few new tracks next weekend. Talking about next weekend, LUG/IP will have a table at the Trenton Computer Festival (TCF). LUG/IP will also be participating with NJULUGS in an Installfest – so if you need Linux installed on your computer and live near by, come on out! Unfortunately, I won’t be able to make it due to work commitments, but hopefully it will be a success.

On Sunday, April 2, 2006 I made a rare appearance at a street course to watch the Indy Racing League, Indy Infiniti Pro Series, and the SCCA SPEED World Challenge Touring Races. I bought tickets for me and my father only a few days before going to Florida, but was quite happy with the seats I had in the Turn 1 Grandstands. The tickets had a price tag of $80 a piece which was a little steep in my book, but I guess they were not outrageous for this type of event. We decided to show up early and we found a parking spot about 4 blocks from the track and then, after picking up our tickets at will-call, walked around the SCCA pits. These SCCA World Challenge race cars are pretty cool. While I’m not sure what changes are allowed to the cars, they really are regular road cars turned into racing cars – and they really look good going around the track. While the winner, driving a Mazda 6, started up front it was still a fun race, and since I own a Mazda 6 I was happy to see the “zoom zoom” car win. The Indy Pro Series race was not as exciting. I think if they had a few more cars it would have been better. The Indy car race was pretty good and we didn’t get to see some pretty nice racing moves and passes in turn 1. Unfortunately with these types of tracks you can not see most of the track. Luckily, for these bigger races, the promoters try to address this by putting up big “jumbo-trons” around the track. Thanks to the one in front of us we were able to keep track of what was going on. The race was pretty interesting, esp. with the different pit strategies at the end. Helio Castroneves won the race. While I like Helio I would have rather seen a non-Penske car win. The one driver I wanted to see how he would perform was PJ Chesson. He wasn’t all that impressive in his first IndyCar road course start (it may have actually been his first ever road course start). I’m sure the car he was driving wasn’t really up to par either, but he seemed like a fish out of water on the road course. Hopefully, with some more seat time the former Sprint Car driver from New Jersey can get some good finishes on the ovals this year though.

My 2006 season race watching stats after St. Petersburg:

Races: 8
Tracks: 5 (3 new)
States: 4 (1 new)

On Saturday, April 1 I went to the Citrus County Speedway in Inverness, Florida to see the The Tampa Bay Area Racing Association (TBARA) race. TBARA is a series that runs winged sprint cars on asphalt in Florida. Also on the schedule were some od the tracks regular divisions and the Florida mini-cup cars. The Florida mini-cup cars look like half scale NASCAR Nextel Cup cars and are powered by a 18 hp Honda gx390 engine. This was my first visit to Citrus County Speedway. Continue reading →