POSTED June 2, 2002

       BRIAN JENKINS won his 3^rd Mini Thunder Car feature of the season on a picture perfect Sunday night at the Mottville Speedway as he held off his wife, Jennifer Jenkins, for the win and $60 in the 25 lapper! Leroy Dick was 3^rd and George Davis 4^th and they were the only cars running at the end as Vic Krontz bent an axle during the feature and Danny Zimmerman, Jr. had a flat tire.

Jennifer Jenkins beat Brian in the dash and heat . A special “reverse gear” race was held just before intermission and 5 MTC lined up at the start finish line with the world famous flag lady-Rita Courtney, in front on them ready to wave the green as the crowd counted down! When she waved the green she was stunned to find 4 of the 5 cars actually went forward instead of reverse! All 4 missed her but the race had to be started over with better instructions to the 4! Someone in the crowd said the 4 were all graduates of White Pigeon High School! Leroy Dick scored an impressive win in the 2 lapper with Krontz 2^nd and Davis 3^rd.

Defending MTC points champion and current season points leader Fred Garrett missed his first night this season and we now have no 100% drivers, as Fred was the last one! Dick moved to 5^th in the point standings.

Randy Burns won his 2^nd Bomber feature of the season and $100 as he took the 20 lapper over Fred Lowrey and Merrill Garthe. Vern Hammond, season points leader, returned but blew his engine hot lapping! Lowrey took the heat over Burns. Burns moved to 4^th in the point standings and Lowrey 5^th.

Thunder Car season points leader Eric Root won his 3^rd feature of the season as he took the 20 lapper over Richard Allbee and Marty Andreade, back at Mottville for the first time this season! Root managed to lead running both the right way and wrong way and then the right way again! Root also took the heat.

Robert Teadt, Jr. picked up another $100 as he won the 15 lap Mottville Stock feature over Wesley Schaefer! Wesley did take over the season points lead from son Jason, who was there but without his car. Jason told me his car will be ready this Saturday! Teadt also won the heat.

Jeff Brunt made $75 the very easy way! Terry Kline went out in the heat and was unable to start the feature and Brunt was credited with the feature win without running a lap and made $75! It was his 7^th feature win of the season!

It was discovered in the pits that Richard Allbee is our oldest driver at Mottville, by 4 months over Wesley Schaefer! Both are doing very well and showing the “youngsters” how to do it!

Dark  clouds all afternoon and the prediction of thunder showers probably cost us some cars, especially those coming from the east but about 30 minutes before race time the skies cleared and it was great! This time of year you need to understand that there will be predictions of TS almost every day! Plus while there may be a TS say in even Sturgis it might not ever hit Mottville! Either way we will be racing at Mottville!

Matt Starkweather was a spectator but is talking very seriously about being our first Mini Stock for 2002! That is what it takes to get this class started-one driver committing to it and then a 2^nd and a 3^rd and so on!

We have made some adjustments to the 2002 schedule. Saturday, November 30 will be the final race of the season and the Season Champs Trophy Nite. This will give us at least 77 nights with opening night in March having been cancelled due to the cold. Plus I hope to schedule two Friday specials, one in July and one in August! More on that later!

The plans this coming week are to paint he trash barrels in the pits bright yellow! We may throw away several and buy some new ones also as we continue to try to make Mottville look great! We do have a man coming the first part of the week to take away the “junk pile” in the northeast corner of the pits and also some old race cars which no longer run! He will be coming back in about two months for more as I am going to clean out two buildings over the next 4-6 weeks as I get time and put in two more metal doors with dead bolt locks. Also going to put a new roof over one of the storage buildings.

Speaking of hauling away old race cars! We have allowed drivers to leave their cars at the speedway but that was under the assumption they would be running with us regularly! Cars left in the pits and not run regularly will be given to our junk man! We are not zoned to be a junk yard!

This Saturday kids will ride in the race cars at intermission for the first time in several years! We used to do this almost every night and that became a bit much as our car count increased! However I will be scheduling more nights for this, perhaps once per month in July, August and September, maybe even October. After that we do not get many kids because of the cold! We do have two autograph nights scheduled for July 4 week-end and Labor Day week-end.

If anyone thinks are pay-offs are not very, very good they should be talking to Jeff Brunt, Randy Burns or Fred Lowrey! They have been making very good money at Mottville because they run every night!

Anyway looking forward to another great week-end of racing at Mottville! This past week-end ended way too soon! Great weather and great racing! Lets hope for more of the same come next week-end but no matter what the weather is you can count on Mottville Speedway racing!