POSTED MARCH 23 , 2003

JON FITZPATRICK won his 4^th Mini Stock feature of the season on a beautiful Sunday night at the Mottville Speedway! Fitzpatrick padded his season points lead with the win in the 20 lapper and took home $100!

Eric Root was 2^nd and Joe Fitzpatrick, driving his father’s car, was 3^rd. Jon Fitzpatrick also won the heat.

Two time defending Mini Thunder Car season points champion Fred Garrett won is 5^th feature of the season in a ferocious 25 lap battle with Steve Clifford that saw the 2 exchanging the lead on each lap! Clifford settled for 2^nd followed by season points leader Derk Sargent, Chuck Hall and Richard Allbee. Garrett won the dash over Sargent and Hall while Clifford took the heat over Garrett and Sargent.

It was another exciting kart feature as Ike Sloop won his 2^nd feature of the season after a 15 lap battle with Tim Kirts! The two raced side by side lap after lap and touched several times! Scot Auld was 3^rd. In the heat it was Kirts over Sloop and Auld.

Defending Pro Stock champion Paul Scott rolled to his 7^th feature win of the season in a 15 lapper over Corey Pressler. But it was a bad day for Scott as his flat bed truck blew an engine on the way to track and he had to use a wrecker to tow both the truck and race car to the track! After winning the feature the rear end of his race car then locked up and had to be towed to the pits!

Eric Root has a new MS having purchased the car of Barry Harrison’s. Barry told me he is building a new one! This is by car a much faster car for Eric than his old one! Once he gets used to the new car I am sure you will see him winning some features!

Joe Fitzpatrick expects to have his MS back this coming week-end! He is the defending MS season points champion and starts out well behind in the points race but we do have about 80 points night to go for the MS!

Danny Zimmerman was at the track watching for the first time since his heart flare-up and says he is just waiting for the engine on his MTC to be completed!

We do expect the first street stock of the season this coming Saturday! Scott Rozner should be ready to race (we hope, anyway!) Several more getting close. I still feel the ss class will be a big class because the rules make the cars fairly inexpensive and we plan on paying them very well! They will be our top class on Saturday nights after March as the PS will run Sundays only starting in April.

Scott Baker had his late model at the track hot lapping it before the races and  during intermission and it looks great!

Scott also found time to fill me on a meeting he attended Saturday night and I can tell you that from the standpoint of the Mottville Speedway the news could not have been any better!

We are about where we were one year at this time except we are running 10 nights in March this season and only ran 4 last year. But last night our car count was identical to what it was in 2002 on the same date and the crowd this year only 1 less than 2002! The big difference is we paid the MS about double what we paid them at the same time in 2002!

Two nights to go in March! This was a most encouraging night! Crowds picking up each night now and car count slowly but gradually building! Our biggest mistake so far this season was running the PS class in March! That will be corrected in 2004 for certain!

MTC are gradually getting bigger fields each week-end and we know a lot more are coming! Karts had 3 already tonight and that is really encouraging! The karters talk like they will be bringing more and more each week-end!

MS will probably be our largest class over the course of the season. We had 9 one night already! We are paying them very well and will pay them even better as the car count goes up!

That leaves the SS class! Still waiting for the first one but this should be a great class because the rules will be strictly enforced to the letter and the pay-off will be very, very good!

All in all just great progress this week-end and looking forward to next week-end big time! Have a great week and I hope to see you in the chat room this week! I will try to be there from 8:30 pm on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and maybe even Thursday this week!