Fast Fridays Speedway Racing
Auburn, California
June 29, 2001

USA Auburn June 29, 2001

A nice warm evening, a big crowd, and a good track.

Scratch Main

The same line up as last week and the same winner. The second and third places changed around. All four were close, making a good race. The track was generally good, but the racing line was not wide enough for Mike Faria to seriously risk an outside line.

 Scratch Consi

 Handicap Main

Probably the best race of the night. Eric Carrillo battled for the first couple of laps with Paul Orlandi, then established a lead of a bike length or so while the big battle took place for second, riding up to 3 abreast. On the penultimate lap Chris Manchester broke away from the rest and got past Carrillo. Bart Bast passed him too on the last lap. Even at the finish, there was less than 20 yards between first and sixth place man.

 Handicap Consi

The same pattern at the front, as the handicap main. Billy Hiles lead for most of the race, until Mike Faria picked his way past. Later Chris Kerr got past him too.

 Div 2 Main

1 JJ Martynse 2 Robert Mellor 3 Shawn Eldridge 4 Vince Bertolucci 5 Matt Browne 6 Tom Adams

JJ Martynse won his third Division 2 main of the season. 

 Div 2 Consi

1 Brian Leventon 2 Harlan Bast Snr. 3 Mike Browne 4 Rachelle Kerr 5 Glenn Scott 6 Ron Woodsford

 Div 3 Main

1 Mike Achilles 2 David Baker 3 Bill Warnock 4 Bruce Baker

Also in the race were Charlie Pascuzzi, Mike Hooten, Kevin Fereira and Kim Reeg, who was in second place until falling on the last corner.

 Div 3 Consi

1 Brenton Bast 2 David Fonts 3 Jason Botsford 4 Les Veale 5 Dean Blankenbiller 6 Kim Valentine 7 Brian Leventon 8 Eric Ryan

Juniors Div 1

Mark Carrillo and Greg Hooten were having a good race out ahead of Danny Easley, TJ Fowler and Alex Marcucci. Hooten fell down, taking Easley and Fowler with him. Because of additional events time was running short, so there was no time for a rerun and Carrillo was rightly declared the winner. 

 Juniors Div 2

Juniors Div 3

 I try to avoid saying anything negative about US Speedway and there is normally nothing negative to say. However, I would have preferred to see a re-run of the Division 1 Junior race than the “spectacles” that were shown tonight.

There are a number of reasons why I dislike sidecars. They seem to introduce an obnoxiously loud element to the crowd that thankfully don’t normally come to Speedway and the competitors show no kindness to the two wheeled competitors by tearing the track up doing celebratory donuts.

The annual backwards race, to me is a non-event. Even seasoned professionals with decades of experience turning left look like third division riders when turning right, and we already have 6 races of that on the program.

3 kids fell down in the peewee race, concerned parents leapt all over the track, which again alerts my concern that peewee racing is a law suit waiting to happen.

For what its worth, in my humble opinion, none of these 3 justify taking time out of a Speedway event. The only really bad news I heard tonight is that the sidecars will be back again later in the year! The good news is that next week, it will be back to the normal program.

 Gary Roberts – groberts@iee.org