April Showers

London, Ontario (April 20, 2008) -

Although I share Kevin Eckert's sentiments regarding The Weather Channel, I couldn't help but heed it's warning yesterday, and so did not make the drive to Fremont. While I was doing yard work and watching Hockey Night in Canada, they got three 305 sprint car heats in before the rain came and washed away the rest of the night. If there were any justice in this world, the Stanley Cup playoffs would at least be in the 2nd round right now. As seems to happen to me every year around this time, I'm starting to lose interest in the playoffs - It's hard to watch hockey when you've been walking around in shorts and sandals for almost a week.

Fremont's current track champion is Byron Reed, who subscribes to the Jon Stanbrough school of paint scheme design...or maybe it's the other way around. The irony being that one of the sponsors of Reed's flat black #5r is Black Swamp Graphics. At least Stanbrough's car is kinda shiny...Stanbrough also had interference from mother nature this weekend as only 1 of 3 scheduled USAC National Sprint Car series events avoided the wet stuff. Shane Cottle took Friday's feature at Gas City I-69 Speedway over a stout 46 car field before Saturday night at Gas City and Sunday at Winchester were washed out.

On Friday night at Attica, it was new Fremont co-promoter Mike Linder taking the feature win ahead of Outlaw invader Daryn Pittman, 2006 Canadian Sprint Car Nationals 5th place finisher Dale Blaney, '07 All Star champ Greg Wilson, and the aforementioned Reed. Other drivers of note to Ontario fans on hand at Attica on Friday were another Outlaw invader in Sam Hafertepe Jr. who led 13 laps at Ohsweken last July, Dustin Daggett who is familiar to any seasoned sprint car fan around here, Mike Dussel who ran 6th in the '06 CSCN, Caleb Griffith, pilot of a 2nd Styres car in the '06 CSCN, Phil Gressman who once replaced Ryan Coniam behind the wheel of the Grove #70 before suffering the same fate as Ryan, and (former?) AVSS competitor Brian Lay.

Limaland also got their season underway Friday night, with Darren Long taking feature honours in the 360 sprint division. Darren showed up at Ohsweken for the Nationals a couple of times but never seemed to make it through tech. His Yoder's #7, which graced victory lane at South Buxton in 2002, is missed in these parts. Tilbury's Kyle Patrick was not a Tornado at Lima, finishing 7th in the B-main while occasional visitors to Ontario JR Stewart, Tim Allison, Cory Seeling, Luke Hall, and Ron Blair were also in attendance at Lima. Blair's #35 took a ride out of the ballpark in turn 4 at Ohsweken in 2006. Thankfully the new catchfence which was put in just before last season's World of Outlaws show should prevent future excursions like that.

A short clip at the end of Wind Tunnel tonight showing old ESPN USAC Thunder footage from IRP in 1991 got me thinking...In a day and age when the quality of tv coverage of all kinds of things is improving, why is short track racing going the opposite way? This year a sprint car race other than the Knoxville Nationals is going to be shown live on Speed Channel, but it has taken nearly 10 years to get back to it, which TNN was doing regularly before their demise.

Officially, the Champ Car World Series is now extinct. The last event ever for the series was held at Long Beach today. Maybe now we can start using the term "Champ Car" in the proper context. There wasn't anything remotely Champ Car-ish in the CCWS.

I was considering going to Merrittville for the 358 Super DIRT series event next weekend, but real life is getting in the way. Instead, I'll open my season in May on the shores of Lake Ontario, where Patriots will invade Fulton and wings will fly around Oswego. Let's hope it's as warm then as it was here over the past few days - this was racing weather if there ever was some.