GOLDEN STATE OPEN WHEEL SPECTACULAR AND NASCAR SUPER LATE MODELS

Source: Doug Stokes
Date: 04/01/2000

Irwindale, Calif. - - It was something of a mini-"Copper World Classic" all wrapped up into three and a half hours of great racing entertainment, as Irwindale Speedway mixed and matched four hot (and different) divisions of racing into one spectacular night of action!

Open-wheeled SRL Super Modifieds, USAC Sprints and Midgets along with Irwindale's premier weekly NASCAR division, the Super Late Modifieds, were the four featured racing event for the night, and none of them disappointed .

In the NASCAR Super Late Models it was a 75-lap dogfight with Charles Utts of Camarillo taking the checker by only a few feet from last week's Opening Night champ Greg Voigt from Goleta. Barking at their heels were Dan Holtz (Bakersfield), Ben Walker (North Hills), and AJ DiMarzo (Saugus) all in a tight pack that ran two and three-wide the whole race. In his post-race interview Utts credited his win to his wife, Kristen, who looks after the race car's tires. "She sets the tire pressures and the stagger for the car . She's the only one on the crew who can read a ruler," said Utts in jest. Utts let on that he was "playing in pain". He had taken the tip and fingernail off his left thumb in a shop accident earlier in the week. "It hurt during the race, but I can hardly feel it now!" the overjoyed winner smiled.

Indy Racing League star Davey Hamilton of Las Vegas got another notch on his gunbelt by winning a USAC Western States Sprint Car main at his ".Favorite short track." Hamilton's steady running (combined with a number of motor mishaps and handling problems for his foes) got him into the lead somewhere around 2/3rds of the way through the 40-lap event and into victory circle. Todd Ellison (West Jordan, Utah), Jeff Gardner (Fresno), Rick Hendrix (Simi Valley), and Mike Boat (Phoenix, AZ) ran second through fifth in the action-packed event. Young (19!) Bobby Boone also got his first at Irwindale, a memorable first win on pavement for the Palmdale driver. His posting fast time in the USAC Midgets set the table for his sparkling win, one in which he led every lap of the scheduled 30 with other racers breathing down his rollbar. First the pressure came from the reining USAC Silver Crown champion, Ryan Newman; and subsequently from eventual second-place (by a whisker) finisher Matt Streeter from Salt Lake City, UT. Downey's own Steve Paden was third, followed by Riverside rookie Josh Wise in fourth, and Shane Scully from Encino in fifth. Voted the race of the night by the Press Box, the Mighty Midgets got much of the excited crowd to their feet more than once in its 15 miles of heated competition.

By the time that eighteen roaring SRL Super Modifieds slithered and screamed onto the Irwindale ½-mile for their 40-lap main the crowd was ripe for one more super show, and they got it! Running faster than anything that competes at the Speedway (Troy Regier lowered the ultimate track record to a breathtaking 15.154 in qualifying), the wildest of the wild "saved the best for last" with a great show that featured a textbook coming-off-a-yellow-flag-restart that catapulted Emmett, Idaho's Rick Veenstra into the lead and right into his first (at Irwindale) victory lane celebration. Regier, from Dinuba, had to settle for the lap record and second place, with Salt Lake City's Lonnie Adamson (who lost an in-the-bag-first-place to Veenstra's rocket restart) finishing third followed by Davey Hamilton and Ricky Otts all the way from Pasadena, Texas in fourth and fifth respectively.

The final event was clocked over at just a bit after 10 pm, allowing most of the 5,920 fans to take a visit to the Pits to congratulate the winners and wish a sincere, " Better luck (you'll get 'em) next time" to the others.

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