POSTED APRIL 13 , 2003

MIKE STEMES won the 25 lap street stock feature before the largest crowd of the season on a beautiful Sunday night at the Mottville Speedway!

Stemes, who won $100 racing for the first time ever, had to battle season points leader Brad Blackburn and Matt Buzzard for the entire laps! Andrea Caines made her racing debut and finished 4^th. In the heat it was Buzzard over Stemes and Blackburn.

Steve Clifford won his 3^rd Mini Thunder Car feature of the season with a 15 lap narrow victory over season points leader Derk Sargent and two time defending champion Fred Garrett! Clifford got by Sargent on lap 11 and won by less than a car length with Garrett only 2 car lengths back! Brian Foote was 4^th followed by Chuck Hall, Tom Parrish and Danny Zimmerman.

Garrett won the dash over Clifford and Sargent while Clifford took the heat over Garrett and Sargent.

Merle Yoder won his 4^th Mini Stock feature of the season as won the 25 lapper and $100 over Eric Root, Jon Fitzpatrick , Kristi Zimmerman and Joe Fitzpatrick. Yoder won the dash over Jon Fitzpatrick and Root and the heat was the same finish.

Randy Morley came to Mottville for the first time in 2003 and won the heat and feature.

Ray Swink won his first kart feature of the season with a 12 lap win over defending champion Jacob Caines, who was at  Mottville for the first time in 2003. In the heat it was Swink over Caines and season points leader Chad Layman.

All heat and dash winners received an Easter ham!

Next week-end the track will run only Saturday, April 19 and will take Easter off before coming back to run every Saturday and Sunday and several Fridays and two Mondays all the way to the end of November!

We not only had our largest crowd of the season but we also had our high car count of the season-23! Weather wise it was an absolutely picture perfect night and it was the most successful week-end of the young season for the track!

We registered 4 new cars, Dennis Zimmerman had his PS present but had heating problems and was unable to race. PS season points leader Paul Scott developed a mechanical problem in the heat and was unable to make the feature.

Robert Sutton’s SS truck had flywheel problems and he was also unable to race but vowed to be back strong next Saturday!

Brian Foote is from the famous Foote racing family as his grandfather is Harry Foote who still races Vintage Mods and Dwarfs! Morley may be driving his MTC some races!

The most thrilling news was having a season high 5 SS on hand! It seems to be taking a long time to build this new class, which actually is a very inexpensive class with good pay! Hopefully this was the start of much more to come!

We had 7 MTC both nights this week-end and a total of 10 different cars for the week-end! Rumor has it Derk Sargent is buying a MS and will turn the MTC over his wife! Stayed tuned for more on this but hopefully it is true as we really like to see new drivers in the MTC division and we like to see MTC drivers move up in class!

We are making certain the SS follow the rules to the letter! All SS are inspected before they race and then the top 3-5 after the feature. So far all infractions have been most minor and easily corrected!

A week-end like this one really gets me excited about the rest of the season! Tuesday I will be painting all the smudge marks on the wall around the track and painting the inside line for the Mottville Mini Cups who race for the first time on April 26!

I do plan on being in the chat room most nights this coming week. We have been having about 10-15 people per night although 10 is the limit at any one time.

I was really sadden to learn of the passing of Mike Brown, one of truly great late model drivers in our area. Mike was a real gentleman and a real friend to the Mottville Speedway and was very supportive of our efforts to bring back affordable racing for all! He will be missed!

Next week-end will really be strange! After racing 7 week-ends of both Saturday and Sunday we will run Saturday only! But after that look out! 73 points nights and every Saturday and Sunday till the end of November plus two Mondays and a bunch of Fridays! More and more this is looking like it will be a great racing season at Mottville!