SoCal USRA NEWSLETTER

January 6, 2001:

Buena Park Raceway

Spray Glue Box Stock:

The day started with one of our new class’, Spray glue box stock. Bill Taylor was fast qualifier with Monty (Best of the West) Ohren and Sam Rackam 2^nd and 3^rd.

With 15 entries, semi’s were the order of the day. Rick Elting, Cliff Kendrick, Bill Pinkston and Chuck Panno made the transfer from the "B" Semi. Bill Taylor, Sam Rackam, Greg Cuerva and JB Barnett transferred out of the "A" Semi. The main started with Taylor and Rackam jumping out to a small lead. In the third heat Sam got wrecked on red and only ran a 40 to drop out of contention. Chuck (Monty, lend me a motor!!) Panno moved into 2^nd and stayed close to Taylor to the finish. Rick Elting made a late charge after a slow motor change to challenge for 2^nd but fell 2 laps short. Greg Cuerva, Sam Rackam, JB Barnett, Bill Pinkston and Cliff Kendrick followed up.

Box Stock:

After the track was cleaned, we set up and dialed in the track for the traditional box stock race.

Bill Taylor was again fast qualifier with Jason Holmes and Sam Rackam 2^nd and 3^rd.

With 11 entries, we had to run a round robin. Early contenders were Bill Pinkston, David Aikins, Greg Cuerva and Sam Rackam who had the first sit out. David could not maintain the pace and slowly dropped from contention, Pinkston suffered problems and also faded from view. Sam and Greg continued hold up their averages. Bill Taylor made his appearance in heat 4 and took the lead on the average in heat 7. Bill held on to complete a clean sweep of the box stock races winning over Sam Rackam, Greg Cuerva, Bill Pinkston, Jason Holmes and David Aikins.

Dale Garcia, Danny Garcia, Rick Kinsella, Rory (hey pop, where was that fast motor from the last race?) Kinsella and Rich Curnutte all suffered various problems.

Group 27:

There were only 5 entries for Group 27 with Mike Graverson as TQ. Jason (El Presidente) Holmes and Richard Curnutte were 2^nd and 3^rd.

Rich led the first heat with Mike passing him in the second heat. John Lathrop ripped off a 101 in the 3^rd heat to take a lead he would hold to the end. The computer shows this to be the first of 3 consecutive perfect heats. Everybody else had a variety of problems. Mike held off Jason by one lap to finish 2^nd and was 5 up on Pat Ularte.

One Motor Open:

This is another new class for SoCal and we were rewarded by having 12 racers sign up.

Qualifying for this class is done on race power and since you cannot change the car until the race starts, all the racers qualified on race tires. Carlos Aloise was TQ with John Tore Anderson and Randy Thompson 2^nd and 3^rd.

Once again, we ended up running a round robin. The first couple of heats featured enough crashing and bashing to make a birthday party race seem calm. But the race started to settle down during heat 3 and in heat 4 they started turning 100+ lap heats. Early leaders on the average were Sam Rackam and Gil Gunderson. Randy Thompson came in and was turning consistent lap totals. Tore entered for heat 4 and so bad was the early heat carnage that he took the lead on average on the red lane. Carlos came in next and chased Tore until heat 7 when Tore broke and was out. Carlos drove quickly and used his ever present speed advantage to open as much as a 5 lap advantage on the average. He finally settled for a 29 lap win or about 3.5 on the average. Gil was one of those caught up in the early heat insanity and this was to cost him in the final results. His first heat 82 was in sharp comparison to the 100+ lap totals he would turn in the later heats. Randy beat him to 2^nd place by only 5 laps. The rest of the cast suffered various misadventures with first time open racer Greg Cuerva taking a fine 4^th. Pat Ularte, Sam Rackam, John Lathrop, Gil Rivera, John Tore Anderson, Richard Curnutte, Jason (ironman) Holmes and Connie (TQ) Aloise rounded out the field.

Open:

There were 7 entries for Open and with most of the racers passing on Qualifying, it was left to Phil Larcom to outduel Gil Gunderson to take the TQ points.

As for the race, can you say, Carlos? Carlos led from the start, but Forrest Watchers kept him in sight the whole way finishing up only 10 laps back. Gil ran 3^rd early, but dropped to 5^th and then made a comeback to get the 3^rd spot in the final results. Mike Graverson, Phil Larcom, Big John Lathrop and Tore Anderson followed with problems of various sorts.

Track Calls:

wIs it really a new season already? It seems like we just finished the Nats.

wWe have 2 new classes for your racing enjoyment this year. Spray glue box stock and one motor open. I think that the early results were promising, but we can’t let down.

wSpray glue box had 15 entries and the regular glue race had 11.

wWe had several scale racers show up for the spray glue race. Chuck Panno used Monty’s motor to claim second. The Forsyth family, dad Steve and son Jonathan, did not fair quite as well but still seemed to enjoy themselves. As they got used to wing car racing king track style, they both ended up running race laps faster than they qualified. Even Monty "Best of the West" Ohren made the first of what we hope will be regular appearances. We also got body painter, scale racer and Nats race winner Gil Rivera to show up and race in both the spray glue race and the one motor race.

wOne motor open out drew the traditional open race 12 to 7. Only one armature was toasted in the one motor race.

wI will leave this to you to determine if it means anything. One motor open ran 807 laps and group 27 ran 793 laps.

wOur esteemed leader did an iron man. He ran in 4 classes and race directed the 5^th. Jason even found time to marshall the spray glue box stock main event

wThe only bad thing that happened all weekend was that Connie showed up without her world famous chocolate chip cookies.