By Dave Westerman<\/p>\n
A great crowd and very unusual warm February weather helped\r\nAuburndale Speedway kick off the 2011 racing season Saturday\r\nnight as seven divisions took to the track for a great night\r\nof racing.\r\n\r\n Young Lance Daubach may well be the driver to beat this year\r\nin the Sportsman class as he simply dominated things all night\r\ntaking the heat race win then surviving a rash of caution flags\r\nto win the 25 lap feature race in flag to flag fashion. Sporting\r\na new ride, Brandon Duchscherer worked his way up to second by\r\nthe checker but had no real answer for Daubach's fleet machine.\r\nSubbing for veteran driver Dave Dunkin, James Wright III came\r\nhome third ahead of Richard Elkins, Jr. and 2010 Modified Mini\r\nStock champion Scotty Sharpe who turned in a stellar performance\r\nin his first outing with his new Sportsman.\r\n\r\n Lee Davis was as impressive as Daubach in taking both the heat\r\nand feature over a quality field of Modified Mini Stocks. Jason\r\nRendell kept Davis honest but had to settle for the runner-up spot.\r\nSharpe came home third in this one just ahead of Chris Spring who\r\nturned in a great run in his first Mod Mini feature after moving\r\nup from the Mini Stock class where he was last years champ. Fifth\r\nspot went to Nathan Florian who got to the track late but made\r\nthe proper adjustments to his car between the heat and feature\r\nand passed a number of cars to net his top five.\r\n\r\n Although a number of Street Stock machines are still getting the\r\nfinal touches put on them for the beginning of the year, James\r\nWright III had his machine ready to go even though his numbers had\r\nto be put on the car after practice was over. Wright then passed\r\nheat race winner Cody McDuffie on lap 14 and raced to the Street\r\nStock feature victory. McDuffie held on for second trailed by\r\nBrian Harbin, Sammy Cressman and Jeff Waterman.\r\n\r\n The biggest field of Scrambler cars in more than a year put on\r\nsome wild racing as Richie Acres and Jeramiah Frere split heat\r\nrace wins. Acres led the feature in his Saturn from start to finish\r\nas the action was \"bump and grind\" behind him. George Gorham, Jr.\r\neventually grabbed second spot while Frere took the checker third\r\nthen lost that position in tech allowing Ronnie Sorensen to inherit\r\nthe third place finish ahead of the brother act of Shane and Bill\r\nBennett. Defending champion Kim Gullett had a rough night getting\r\nthe rear bumper of her car knocked off in an early incident then\r\nhaving to pit to replace a flat tire later in the race. She still\r\nmanaged a ninth place finish. Several new car and driver combos\r\nwere in action in the class with several sporting classy paint jobs.\r\n\r\n The Mini Stocks were short on cars but the fans had plenty to\r\ncheer about as 15 year old Jason Swilley picked up his first career\r\nfeature victory in the class leading green to checker. Mark Wells\r\nhad a career-best second place run while Sonny Miles took third.\r\nHeat winner Eugene Davidson did not start the feature.\r\n\r\n Apparent V-8 Bomber heat and feature winner Bobby Mobley was \r\nDQ'd in tech for unapproved guide plates on the push rods of \r\nhis car's engine allowing Alan Seay to take the win after starting \r\ndeep in the field. Matt Bozeman brought his new car home second in \r\nfront of Preston Davis, Larry Chumney II and John Smith.\r\n\r\n Little 10 year old Kristin Clements did it again in the Kids Club\r\nas she held off Dakota Hunt and Justin Cribbs for the victory, and,\r\nas usual, her win was a very popuar one with the crowd.\r\n\r\n This coming Saturday night the Open Wheel Modifieds, Legend Cars\r\nand Bandoleros have their season-openers and will be joined by the\r\nSportsman cars, Street Stocks, Mini Stocks, V-8 Bombers and \r\nScramblers. Racing starts at 7 PM. For more information call \r\n863-551-1131 or log on to www.auburndaleracing.com<\/a>.\r\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Dave Westerman A great crowd and very unusual warm February weather helped Auburndale Speedway kick off the 2011 racing season Saturday night as seven […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[6,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auburndale-speedway","category-front-page-news","category-race-results"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301","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\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5301"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5303,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5301\/revisions\/5303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}