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Here's a highlight clip I threw together from the trip to Sportsdrome Speedway that Jeff and I made a few weeks ago. (Unfortunately I missed the most spectacular wreck of the night, in the figure 8 feature someone hit the tractor tire entering the first corner and got waaaaay up on his side and slammed into the wall after landing on his wheels. He was OK, but the car wasn't!)

Keep an eye out for many examples of retaliation!

Hate Figure 8 races, such a waste of a buncha cars.

Saturday night, August 6th, was the 25th Annual $10,000 to win Mr. SuperModified at Oswego Speedway. This one was filled was thrills and spills as some of the top SuperModified drivers in the country battled it out for bragging rights and the big paycheck. The night started out slow with rain showers moving through, but after the track was dried for the second time, the racing program rolled off about an hour and half behind schedule. The big show took the green shortly before 10PM and the racing was very hard, but not very clean, right from the get go. Joey Payne, Brian Sobus, Dan Connors, Ray Graham Jr. all took turns in the lead. Behind them, several big crashes took place sweeping up points leader Dave McKnight, DJ Schullick, Shaun Gosselin, Bobby Haynes, Shawn Muldoon and Keith Gilliam. Multiple yellow's resulted in the first of two red flags. The first one was for the Gosselin, Schullick, McKnight crash during which the teams were allowed to refuel the cars. When racing resumed Otto Sitterly put the spurs to the Nicotra Racing #7 and ran down leader Ray Graham Jr. When the white flag flew you could throw a blanket over Graham and Sitterly. The two raced hard into turn one, Graham pushed up, Otto got a run to the bottom exiting turn two and with the big money dangling out in front neither was going to give an inch. Half way down the back stretch the two touched ever so slightly. Otto took a hard turn to the left and hammered the back stretch wall just past the pit gate. The #7 did a full 360 in the air before careening back across the track and coming to rest against the outside wall in a smashed heap. The crowd all stood and a hush came over them. Everyone knew this was a bad wreck and few could remember anyone hitting that hard. To the refief of all Otto climbed from the mangled remains of his car A OK. This crash brought out the second red flag of the night and after a lengthy cleanup, it was back to green flag racing for the last lap, which was run pretty much lock step by the top 3. Ray Graham cruised home just past midnight to collect his second straight $10,000 check and title as Mr. SuperModified. Second was Double 00 Joe Gosek and rounding out the podium was the 88 of Randy Ritskes.

Skip to 2:02 for the thrilling, and scary, white flag lap.

That was a fucking GREAT wreck. That's like some shit you'd see on an "...And They Walked Away" video.

Well, it's never good to see them crash, but I know what you mean. Still, that was scary as hell being in the grandstands for. We all thought he was hurt. Even the rash of stuck throttles that were rampant with the Supers a few years ago never looked as bad as that one did. Still, kudo's go out to the Oswego Safety Crew and the track officials. It's hard to see, but if you look close you can see the red lights/flag are displayed before Otto's car even comes to a halt. Safety crew was on the scene quickly. Horrible crash though.

Overall, a decent night of racing though. The small blocks were going for $1,500 to win and the top 8 guys battled wheel to wheel all night. Good racing in both classes.

With the way shop classes are getting axed from high schools around the country, and the decline of the number of auto repair shops for someone to work at, where else are younger folks/inexperienced folks going to learn the fundamentals of how to build a racecar? It's better for folks to learn how to weld a cage, fabricate body panels, change parts, etc. in something cheap and slow than to start with a street stock, smash it up once and never come back.

I know a lot of tracks cheap out and make them the show without adding incentives for folks to move up from them, or use them instead of a real racing division, but you have to accept what they let you do, assuming they're done correctly.

Last time I went to Auburndale to watch an open wheel modified race, 6 cars showed up.

This past weekend, according to the results page, there were 28. If they get that kind of car count again I'm definitely going to have to get down there for the next race.

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"The track's wet, that's what I think about it. Fucking shit gets wet when it rains."
-Dale Earnhardt Jr.

I posted this in the Motorsports Video thread, but here is the documentary coverage of the Firecracker 150 endurance kart race I was in at Thunderhill: My team was in the black #11 kart.

[youtube]N-UbMyQIZas&feature=[/youtube]
[youtube]Nwk0pF6o5sM&feature=[/youtube]

It's called a pure stock class. They run the regular oval. Basically how those Fig8 heat races were. Fig8's destroy cars.

Until you get the guys who move down from thundercars or latemodels due to cost, yet throw more money and experience than necessary at their cars and kick the shit out of all newcomers (save for the ones that throw more money than them at their stuff).

Part of it is learning skills, and part of it is the ego boost that comes from running well to keep folks interested in moving up.

This is what you get when you shit the bed with the Touring divisions, I suppose:
http://hometracks.nascar.com/NASCAR_Sta ... r_Showdown

Remember when Joey Logano "won" it 3 years in a row?

Keith Rocco destroyed some cars last night.

Damn.

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"The track's wet, that's what I think about it. Fucking shit gets wet when it rains."
-Dale Earnhardt Jr.

The Whelen mod race in Canada only has 18 cars on the entry list, with 2 local cars to be added.

Nice work, NASCAR.

Heres a better view of the wreck from my local track this weekend.

Allison Legacy shit. That wreck is worse looking than it was because of the fibreglass bodies.

I hate that series though, when they come to our track all they do is wreck.

This video has a shot of the incident that got Keith Rocco suspended for 1 week at Stafford:

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http://www.youtube.com/TMRacingVideos

That was smart.

We have the Whelen Southern Modified Tour here at Langley Speedway tomorrow night. I found out this week there is no TV coverage of this race which is great news for me, not so good for the series though.

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http://www.youtube.com/TMRacingVideos