{"id":20494,"date":"2013-12-09T16:49:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:49:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/?p=20494"},"modified":"2013-12-09T16:50:04","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:50:04","slug":"nichols-all-the-way-in-tbara-sprints-at-orlando-speedworld","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/front-page-news\/nichols-all-the-way-in-tbara-sprints-at-orlando-speedworld\/","title":{"rendered":"Nichols All the Way in TBARA Sprints at Orlando Speedworld"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"TBARA\"Orlando SpeedWorld wrapped up calendar year 2013 with a great evening of\u00a0racing in front of a nice crowd on a very balmy night weather-wise for early\u00a0December while much of the country was in a deep freeze.\u00a0\u00a0The TBARA Sprint Cars finally got to run their program that was postponed by\u00a0rain in June and 15 teams came out to support the event.\u00a0\u00a0Fifteen-year-old Garrett Green looked like a veteran in winning heat race\u00a0number one after early leader Tommy Nichols’ car partially lost power with two\u00a0laps to go.\u00a0 Joey “The Ace” Aguilar took the checker second with Nichols\u00a0hanging on for third.\u00a0 The second heat race was dominated by Leesburg’s Dude\u00a0Teate who led every lap to finish in front of Ben Fritz and John Gilbert, Jr.\u00a0Gilbert would later turn his mount over to Mickey Kempgens for the feature\u00a0race.<\/p>\n

The 30-lap finale had local Titusville driver Rex “Boneman” Hollinger on the\u00a0pole for the start.\u00a0 For Hollinger, a regular here in various classes in\u00a0recent years, it was his first-ever SpeedWorld start in his Sprint Car.\u00a0 At\u00a0the drop of the green it was Tommy Nichols who grabbed the early advantage\u00a0from the outside pole but Hollinger made a good account of himself settling\u00a0into second spot.\u00a0 Mark Gimmler made a pass on Hollinger but was well behind\u00a0the leader at that point as Hollinger was nicely holding off many of the\u00a0“heavy hitters” from third position.<\/p>\n

Gimmler was doing his best to track down Nichols but tangled with the lapped\u00a0car of Bobby Rose going into turn one on lap 13.\u00a0 Gimmler ended up in the wall\u00a0and out of action while Rose’s car also had to be towed from the speedway.\u00a0This allowed the field to close up on Nichols but the Plant City driver zipped\u00a0away on the restart as Hollinger gamely held on to the second spot.\u00a0 On lap\u00a015, Hollinger slipped just a bit allowing a train of five cars to get\u00a0underneath him led by Teate.\u00a0 By this time Nichols had checked out but a turn\u00a0one spin by Matt Alfonso on lap 23 slowed the action a second time and it\u00a0looked like there would be a barn-burner of a finish coming up.<\/p>\n

Nichols, who has had his fair share of bad luck in recent years, was easily up\u00a0to the task as he pulled away from the field over the final seven laps to win\u00a0by a comfortable margin and set up an extremely happy victory celebration for\u00a0he and his crew.\u00a0 Teate finished a few car lengths back in second with Aguilar\u00a0taking the show position ahead of Fritz and Green.\u00a0 Kempgens came from a last\u00a0row starting spot to nab sixth while Hollinger had one of the best runs of his\u00a0short Sprint Car racing career by taking seventh.\u00a0 Rounding out the top ten\u00a0were Chris Gimmler and Alfonso.\u00a0 Todd Donaldson, Terry Taylor, Matt Jarrett,\u00a0Mark Gimmler and Rose completed the finishing field. Jarrett was running in\u00a0his first-ever TBARA event driving the oldest car in the field that had\u00a0previously seen action with the Daytona Antique Auto Racing Association. \u00a0It\u00a0was also the first time Jarrett had run the car with a wing on it.<\/p>\n

In other action, Wes Railing, Jr. led the final 17 laps of the Bomber feature\u00a0that had a strong field of cars.\u00a0 Railing took over the front position from\u00a0early leader Megan Matheny and held off a late challenge from Neil Kirby to\u00a0take the win.\u00a0 Richard Fiore, Jr. took the checker in third followed by Shane\u00a0Sutorus and Matheny.\u00a0 Completing the field were Charlie King, Warren Howey,\u00a0Zach Curtis, Jeff Gross, Jamie Sullivan, Rich Tyner and Jim Erb.\u00a0 Larry Walls\u00a0and Aaron Overman did not start.<\/p>\n

The 35-lap Super Stock race was a runaway win for Orlando’s Donny Funk as he\u00a0passed early leader Doug Samion on the fourth lap and was never headed.\u00a0Samion was second ahead of Brandon Christian, Art Hendren, Michael Held and\u00a0Steve Daniels.<\/p>\n

Mike Belusar of Punta Gorda, a winner at SpeedWorld many times in Dwarf Car\u00a0competition, won the Three Quarter Midget feature over Chris Gimmler, Steven\u00a0Maier and Ron Koehler.\u00a0 It was the first TQ Midget event here in many years.<\/p>\n

The Antique Stock Cars were on hand with a nice field and wide variety of\u00a0cars.\u00a0 The feature for the small block V-8’s and six-clylinder-powered cars\u00a0was won by Tim Brush over Steve Parrish and Frank Lemerise while the big block\u00a0V-8 feature was taken by Frank Lenhardt over Larry Larivee and Mark May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Orlando SpeedWorld wrapped up calendar year 2013 with a great evening of\u00a0racing in front of a nice crowd on a very balmy night weather-wise for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,3,18,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20494","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-front-page-news","category-orlando-speedworld","category-race-results"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20494"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20498,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20494\/revisions\/20498"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20494"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20494"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20494"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}