by Larry MacMillan (Inverness, Fl. 9/8/01) For the fourth time in the 2001 season, rain won again at Citrus County Speedway. A short rain shower came during warm ups that cut short the 125 car testing and tuning session. The clean up crew and about 20 racecar volunteers got the track dried out and race ready just in time for the drivers meeting. Eight heat races took the checkered flag before another heavy rain ended the night. Mini Cup cars were visiting in a rainout make up race and kicked off the night of qualifying heat races.
Top gun in the first heat was Bob Struyk with a wire-to-wire win in the six-lap event. Doug Smith locked on to his rear bumper for a solid second place run just head of Josh Hermann. Tom Clark came off the outside pole to take the win in the second heat over pole sitter Terry Tullis and Brian Etty.
Hobby Stocks saw James Lord come up with his first heat win of the year followed by Nick Fiorentino. Point leader Richie Smith turned up the heat in the final lap of the second heat to log his 9th heat win of the season. He snatched the win away from Gary Sharp who had to settle for second over Roy Perkins the trio came across the line in a side-by-side finish.
Mike Bell came out for the third week in the borrowed #22 race car and made a run for the point off turn four for the win in another side by side finish with Curtis Yoamans and Don Teague. Point runner up Ernie Reed out ran his teammate Dean Lawyer in the run for the flag in the second heat. Kathy Ray held out for a third place finish.
Ron Bartley broke away from the pack at the green flag and chalked up his third heat win of the season in the first Mini Stock heat. Young rookie, Dustin DesChamps locked in his best finish ever in his new ride with a second place finish over Harry Futch Jr. Mark Sowell picked up his 8th heat win of the year.
Rick Coleman, racing for his brother point leader Frank Coleman, outran Jim Desnoyer in the race for second. All heats run prior to the rain out will stand up for next weeks feature races. Sportsman and Late Models will run heat races to qualify for their features next week plus the Figure 8s will be added to the program for their regular run.
Late Models will try one more time to get their 20-20 feature race in with a caution coming out in lap twenty and taking a double line restart for the final 20 laps in the order they were running at the time of the caution for a $1,500 win purse.
Thunder Stocks will run just one feature race. The Great American Kids Bicycle Race with 25 registrants has been postponed and may also be run next week. Please check our midweek report for further information on the citruscountyspeedway.com web site.
