Citrus County Speedway , April 1, 2006 2006 April 7
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.
The Citrus County Speedway is evidence that a well run track can get fans in the stands and be successful. Even though other tracks in Florida have closed recently, Citrus County seems t be going strong. What did they do right, you ask? Well I’ll tell you: 1) They didn’t run all the regular divisions with a touring division visiting. 2) The admission price ($15 for adults) was a bargain. 3) While the track facilities weren’t the newest or the fanciest, they were clean and looked to be maintain. 4) They just almost on time. 5) They didn’t waste time between heat races, run tons of extra laps under yellow, and otherwise kept the show moving. 6) They had a reasonable 20 minute intermission. 7) The didn’t have the TBARA race for last. 
The food and drink were quite edible and reasonably priced. The track (and handicapping procedures) allowed for an exciting race (esp. for pavement). I could go on, but for these and other reasons I and the three other people (my dad and two uncles) who went with me had an enjoyable time. They didn’t do everything right (for example they probably should have had shorter minicup races or ran them at a different time), but they did more then enough to have an almost full house of fans in the stands.
The TBARA races seem to be almost always won by Dave Steele. This race, however, was not as Dave got caught up in an early wreck and he had to come from the back and “only” made it up to third. At any rate it was fun to watch him charge back through the field and watch these super-fast sprint cars on a good track for them. The top five were: 1) 18 Stan Butler; 2) 3X Bo Hartley; 3) 91 David Steele; 4) 19 Keith Butler; 5) 1X John Anderson.
My 2006 season race watching stats after Citrus County:
Races: 7
Tracks: 4 (2 new)
States: 4 (1 new)