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| TBARA Sprints set to Pound the Pavement of Orlando SpeedWorld | by Dave Westerman
Race fans are in for a real treat this Friday night at Orlando Speedworld as the Tampa Bay Area Racing Association Winged Outlaw Sprint Cars make their one and only appearance for 2004 on the 3/8 mile banked oval.
Racing along with the sprint cars will be five regular FASCAR divisions: Modified, Sportsman, Mini Stock, Super Stock and Strictly Stock.
The TBARA group has been having it's most competitive year in some time with a host of new winners including current TBARA rookie point leader Troy DeCaire who drove the Stan Butler Special to his first career victory at FASCAR's newest track, Columbia Motorsports Park near Lake City last week. DeCaire leads John Gilbert, Jr. by just 14 points in the Rookie standings. Like DeCaire, Gilbert also scored his first career win earlier this year at Ocala Speedway.
These "young guns" will be challenged by a host of veteran TBARA drivers including Dude Teate who leads the current overall point standings by 48 over ageless wonder Wayne Reutimann, Sr. The elder Reutimann is just one point ahead of third place Doug Heveron, the former Oswego Classic Supermodified champion who now resides in Florida and drives for Heckman Motorsports out of Homestead.
Dave Slawiak, a former karting champion who has scored several TBARA wins in his three seasons since moving to sprints, is fourth in the points chase, but the guy to watch at Speedworld will likely be the young man who is fifth in points, Keith Butler.
Butler takes to the Speedworld track like a duck to water and has several victories here to prove it. He was turning the track in the 12.80-90 range during exhibition laps run during last weeks race program.
Keith's brother Shane, who ran the bulk of his races up north this year, is expected in the field as well along with other TBARA standouts like Ray Bragg, Bo Hartley, Wendy Mathis, Sport Allen and the brother act of Gary and Mark Gimmler. Dave Steele, the 2004 USAC Silver Crown Champion may also be in the field if his schedule permits, plus USCS standout Kenny Adams may be in the field too since the Speedworld track is close to his home in Malabar.
Pit gates open at 4PM and grandstands open at 6PM. Racing action begins promptly at 8PM.
Due to the Street Nationals at the Speedworld Drag strip next door, where over 500 cars are expected to participate, Speedworld's oval track will be dark this Saturday so that the the grounds can be used for overflow parking from the drag strip.
SPEEDWORLD NOTES:
Jeremy Colangelo did something no one else has been able to do in RE/MAX Legends Car racing this year; pass Patrick Conrad during a race and make it stick. Colangelo's second career win unfortunately wasn't witnessed by his proud parents who were in Colorado and good the good news by cell phone. Conrad's weekend wasn't bad though as he drove like a veteran to a convincing Super Late Model win on Friday night. These are two young drivers who bear watching.
The "never give up" award for the week had to go to Sportsman point leader Richard Hight. Hight was trying to scuff in some new tires and spun in between turns three and four and was clobbered by hard-luck Donnie Smith. Although Smith had to trailer his machine for the night, Hight went to work and had his badly damaged car repaired and on track for time trials where amazingly he set third quick time! Hight then led the first half of the 50 lap Sportsman special before handling problems caused him to fade to a fourth place finish. Not bad since he bruised his ribs in the afternoon crash and was in severe pain.
The new Volusia County Racecars team had a great weekend starting with Charlie Vest's first career win in the Sportsman 50. Michael Williams then took his new VCR Super Late Model to New Smyrna Speedway and won the feature there.
Orlando Speedworld is just about to finalize dates for the 2005 Winternationals which will encompass two full weeks of racing next February. Slated to race already are the RE/MAX Legends Cars, Mod Lites, Classic Dwarf Cars, BM Modifieds, Mini Cups, Bandeleros, and Baby Grand Cars.
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