Orlando SpeedWorld wrapped up calendar year 2013 with a great evening of racing in front of a nice crowd on a very balmy night weather-wise for early December while much of the country was in a deep freeze. The TBARA Sprint Cars finally got to run their program that was postponed by rain in June and 15 teams came out to support the event. Fifteen-year-old Garrett Green looked like a veteran in winning heat race number one after early leader Tommy Nichols’ car partially lost power with two laps to go. Joey “The Ace” Aguilar took the checker second with Nichols hanging on for third. The second heat race was dominated by Leesburg’s Dude Teate who led every lap to finish in front of Ben Fritz and John Gilbert, Jr. Gilbert would later turn his mount over to Mickey Kempgens for the feature race.
The 30-lap finale had local Titusville driver Rex “Boneman” Hollinger on the pole for the start. For Hollinger, a regular here in various classes in recent years, it was his first-ever SpeedWorld start in his Sprint Car. At the drop of the green it was Tommy Nichols who grabbed the early advantage from the outside pole but Hollinger made a good account of himself settling into second spot. Mark Gimmler made a pass on Hollinger but was well behind the leader at that point as Hollinger was nicely holding off many of the “heavy hitters” from third position.
Gimmler was doing his best to track down Nichols but tangled with the lapped car of Bobby Rose going into turn one on lap 13. Gimmler ended up in the wall and out of action while Rose’s car also had to be towed from the speedway. This allowed the field to close up on Nichols but the Plant City driver zipped away on the restart as Hollinger gamely held on to the second spot. On lap 15, Hollinger slipped just a bit allowing a train of five cars to get underneath him led by Teate. By this time Nichols had checked out but a turn one spin by Matt Alfonso on lap 23 slowed the action a second time and it looked like there would be a barn-burner of a finish coming up.
Nichols, who has had his fair share of bad luck in recent years, was easily up to the task as he pulled away from the field over the final seven laps to win by a comfortable margin and set up an extremely happy victory celebration for he and his crew. Teate finished a few car lengths back in second with Aguilar taking the show position ahead of Fritz and Green. Kempgens came from a last row starting spot to nab sixth while Hollinger had one of the best runs of his short Sprint Car racing career by taking seventh. Rounding out the top ten were Chris Gimmler and Alfonso. Todd Donaldson, Terry Taylor, Matt Jarrett, Mark Gimmler and Rose completed the finishing field. Jarrett was running in his first-ever TBARA event driving the oldest car in the field that had previously seen action with the Daytona Antique Auto Racing Association. It was also the first time Jarrett had run the car with a wing on it.
In other action, Wes Railing, Jr. led the final 17 laps of the Bomber feature that had a strong field of cars. Railing took over the front position from early leader Megan Matheny and held off a late challenge from Neil Kirby to take the win. Richard Fiore, Jr. took the checker in third followed by Shane Sutorus and Matheny. Completing the field were Charlie King, Warren Howey, Zach Curtis, Jeff Gross, Jamie Sullivan, Rich Tyner and Jim Erb. Larry Walls and Aaron Overman did not start.
The 35-lap Super Stock race was a runaway win for Orlando’s Donny Funk as he passed early leader Doug Samion on the fourth lap and was never headed. Samion was second ahead of Brandon Christian, Art Hendren, Michael Held and Steve Daniels.
Mike Belusar of Punta Gorda, a winner at SpeedWorld many times in Dwarf Car competition, won the Three Quarter Midget feature over Chris Gimmler, Steven Maier and Ron Koehler. It was the first TQ Midget event here in many years.
The Antique Stock Cars were on hand with a nice field and wide variety of cars. The feature for the small block V-8’s and six-clylinder-powered cars was won by Tim Brush over Steve Parrish and Frank Lemerise while the big block V-8 feature was taken by Frank Lenhardt over Larry Larivee and Mark May.