Fast Fridays Speedway
Gold Country Fairgrounds - Auburn, CA
2001 SIDECARS / BACKWARDS MAIN
Fast Fridays Speedway
June 29, 2001
From Gary Roberts
A nice warm evening, a big crowd, and a good track.
Scratch Main
1 Chris Manchester 2 Mike Faria 3 Bart Bast 4 Bobby Hedden
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
1 Chad Felicio 2 Tommy Hedden 3 Bryan Yarrow 4 Rich Marcucci
Handicap Main
1 Chris Manchester (40) 2 Bart Bast (50) 3 Eric Carrillo (20) 4 Paul
Orlandi (20) 5 Bobby Hedden (50) 6 Chad Felicio (30)
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
1 Mike Faria (50) 2 Chris Kerr (20) 3 Billy Hiles (0) 4 Rick Shafer
(0) 5 Ivan Sevart (0) 6 Glen Moore (0)
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.
Division 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.
Division 2 Consi
1 Brian Leventon 2 Harlan Bast Snr. 3 Mike Browne 4 Rachalle Kerr 5 Glenn Scott 6 Ron Woodsford
Division 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.
Division 3 Consi
1 Brenton Bast 2 David Fonts 3 Jason Botsford 4 Les Veale 5 Dean
Blankenbiller 6 Kimi Valentine 7 Brian Leventon 8 Eric Ryan
Juniors Division 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 Division 2
1 Jay Ricketts 2 Jeff Butler 3 Amanda English 4 Tom Fuhrman
5 Pete King 6 Paul Johnson 7 Bruce Bast
Juniors Division 3
1 Mitchell Johnson 2 Adam Butler 3 Tori Hubbert
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.
| 
