The Intermountain Mini Sprints put on an exciting 15 car duel on Saturday, July 5th at Desert Thunder Raceway to celebrate America's Independance Day weekend. The main event started with a 4 abreast salute that lasted for 3 laps. Point leader Jared Elwell paced the field with a large American flag strapped to his wing while Pit Steward Brannigan Hunter and IMS Secretary Heather Brewer sang "America the Beautiful".
Defending IMS Champion Burnie Hendrickson brought the 13 car main event to a picture perfect start. Jamie Swertfeger won the drag race into Turn 1 and built a nice lead through the first 10 laps. Swertfeger looked to be the man to beat until transmission problems took him out of contention. On lap 9, Jason Elwell, running 4th, slid high coming off turn 4 and hit the front straightaway wall hard sending him back into traffic and collecting 5th place Bob Brewer. Elwell's car was heavily damaged in the accident. Brewer was able to remove the nose wing and restarted in 11th position at the back of the field.
Jared Elwell was moving through the pack, taking 2nd spot from Burnie Hendrickson on lap 6 and moved to the lead on lap 10 as Swertfeger's #11 pulled to a stop in turn 1 with a transmission failure. Brewer continued to pass cars coming from 11th to 4th narrowly missing a spinning Tim Savage in turn 2 and challenging new club member Charley Hanna from Grand Junction, Colorado for 3rd at the white flag. Congratulations to Charley on a solid 3rd place finsh in his first event with us. Charley brought his neighbor and fellow mini sprint driver Troy Ullery to serve as Crew Chief. We look forward to having Troy back in action shortly.
The race finshed with Elwell taking the checkered flag in front of Hendrickson, Hanna, Brewer and Jason Fleming.
Heat races were won by Burnie Hendrickson and Jamie Swertfeger whiile the Trophy was once again collected by Jared Elwell.
The Intermountain Mini Sprint's next race is Saturday, July 19, 2003 at 6:00pm at Desert Thunder Raceway in Price, Utah.
Heat 1- 1)Burnie Hendrickson, 2)Jared Elwell, 3)Jack Elwell, 4)Charley Hanna, 5)Bob Brewer, 6)Butch Graham, 7)Ed Thayer
Heat 2- 1)Jamie Swertfeger, 2)Tim Savage, 3)Jason Elwell, 4)Jason Fleming, 5)Todd Hamilton, 6)Dan Carlson
Trophy Dash - 1)Jared Elwell, 2)Tim Savage, 3)Burnie Hendrickson, 4)Jamie Swertfeger
Feature- 1)Jared Elwell, 2)Burnie Hendrickson, 3)Charley Hanna, 4)Bob Brewer, 5)Jason Fleming, 6)Tim Savage, 7)Mike Kesler, 8)Butch Graham, 9)Jack Elwell, 10)Jamie Swertfeger, 11)Jason Elwell, 12)Dan Carlson, 13)Todd Hamilton
