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Round 9. Buena Park Raceway, Buena Park, CA. Sept 13, 2003

Round 9. Buena Park Raceway, Buena Park, CA. Sept 13, 2003

 It was with heavy hearts and a deep feeling of loss that we gathered together at Buena Park for round 9 of the 2003 series. It was just about 10 days prior to the race that we heard about the passing of David Aikens. There were a number of racers that paid tribute to David with their cars.

Spray glue 12
We managed 11 entries and after the computer picked the lanes we were off to the races.

Group 12
We could only manage 7 entries for this race and it was Jim (so what else is new) Swofford picking up the TQ points.

The race started with Jim running 61 laps on blue and it was pretty much over at that point. Bill Pinkston and Monty Ohren swapped the 2nd spot a couple of times through the event with Bill taking over for good when Monty knocked his motor out in heat 7. Jim won the race by 27 laps over Bill with Monty in 3rd ahead of Chris Radisich, Rick Elting, Rich Curnutte and Dale Garcia.

One Motor Open
This was our largest class for the day with 13 entries. And that called for semi's.

Forrest Watchers, Jim Swofford, Rich Humphrey and Tore Anderson made the move ups from the "A" semi with Randy Thompson, Al Chuck, Mickey Johnson and Robert Park, who was making his first start using glue never mind cobalts or open motors, moving up from the "B" semi. Jim decided not to race and Mike Graverson moved in to take his place.

Forrest bolted out of the gate early with Tore and Mickey keeping him honest. But Forrest was now off the bottom gutters and started to put it to them and started pulling out a lead. Tore was out in the middle of heat 5 and Mickey was slow on black letting Mike move into 2nd. Mike was out during heat 7 and Mickey moved back into 2nd. At the end it was Forrest on the top step with Mickey 2nd and Randy Thompson 3rd after a bad wreck in the first heat bent up the back end of the car. Mike finished 4th with Tore, Richard Robert and Al all dropping out.

G-7
We managed to get only 7 racers to signup for the G-7 race. Nobody was real interested in qualifying, so it was decided to allow the fast lap on the orange lane to take the TQ points. Randy was the only racer to turn a sub 2-second lap and he did it on orange, white and red! Randy takes the 7 points.

Mike Graverson and Forrest Watchers led after the first heat with 136 laps and Gil Gunderson just one back. In heat 2 Gil laid down the race high heat of 138 laps and moved into the lead. But Forrest was up to the task and moved back into the lead while running on the red lane in heat 3. By heat 4 Forrest was 20 laps up on the field. This lead continued to grow and Forrest won the race by 71 laps over Phil Larcom and Randy Thompson. Mike Graverson, Pat Ularte, Al Chuck and Gil Gunderson all contributed to Forrest's win ticket.

David Aikens
There were a couple of tributes to David by the racers. David always ran the same design and paint scheme on his bodies. Monty Ohren was the painter of those bodies and he painted one more body with David's mask adding "David: Wish you were here" to the mask and then retired the mask forever.

Forrest Watchers cut David's picture out of the magazines and mounted them in the cars he won 2 races with over the weekend. So I guess you could say that David's last rides were a pair of wins. I think he would have liked that.

And more bad news. While watching the IRL race from Fontana, ABC announced the passing of Bob Sprow, Bob raced some wing cars with us in the late 90's and raced at Uncle Jax in Lake Forest, participating in the weekly scale program when his schedule allowed.