POSTED JULY 13 , 2003

TIM VITALIcame to the Mottville Speedway for the first time Sunday and won the Mid Season Championship 15 lap Street Stock feature and $100 in a close race! Season points leader Robert Sutton was 2^nd by mere inches and Larry Saunders was 3^rd by mere inches also! Don Vitali was 4^th followed by Bobby Grice, Jr and Anthony Vitali. In the heat it was Don Vitali over Saunders and Sutton.

Merle Yoder won the 15 lap Mini Stock feature for his 9^th feature win of the season and took home $100! Michael Landry was 2^nd followed by Shane Eldridge, season points leader Eric Root, Dale Barnett and Glenna Sargent.

In the heat it was Yoder over Landry and Eldridge and in the dash it was Yoder over Root and Sargent.

Two time defending Mini Thunder Car season points champion Fred Garrett won a close 15 lap feature for his 22^nd feature win of the season! Steve Clifford was 2^nd followed by Chuck Hall and Richard Allbee. Allbee won the dash over Clifford and Hall while Clifford took the heat over Allbee and Hall.

Tony Eldridge won his 2^nd Bomber feature of the season with a 15 lap win over Lane Evans who won the heat.

Jeff Brunt won the rained out 12 lap Pro Stock feature over season points leader Paul Scott but in the regular 12 lapper it was Scott over Brunt.

Bill Stump made it 4 kart feature wins in 4 tries this season as he took the 15 lap feature over his son Justin Stump, Mike Zehr and season points leader Jacob Caines. In the heat it was Bill Stump over Justin Stump and Caines.

This coming week-end is a triple header week-end at Mottville with the MS going 50 laps for $250 to win on Friday, the Mottville Mini Cups joining the field on Saturday and Sunday hot dogs are just 50 cents!

This was certainly one of our more exciting nights of the season! The SS feature was the final event of the night and was absolutely outstanding! Very close racing! For 6 cars we made an outstanding pay-off of $100-70-50-40-$35! For an 8 car MS field the pay-off was $100-60-50-40-$30!

All heat and dash winners and the top 5 in all features received special American Flag trophies!

We tied our largest car count of the season for our cars and it was our 3^rd largest crowd of the season as well! 

Jason Schafer had engine problems and was unable to run but vowed to have another engine in the car for the Friday Nite Special! John Yoder also had engine problems during the dash and was done for the night! Scott Dunning started out very fast in his kart but then blew the engine and was done for the night as well!

The only real controversy came during the MS feature. Merle Yoder had a very large lead on the field and when he lapped Sargent on the front stretch she mistakenly turned into him, cutting his tire. We ruled Merle could go to the pits and change the tire and get his spot back because the accident was in no way at all his fault! Some did not like the call and I am certain several tracks would not have called it that way but I am also certain that it was the correct and fair call to make and I am happy we made it!

Thanks to the $25 pit pass for the first time ever we were able to pay $100 to win for both the MS and SS classes without having 10 cars! Also SS got $35 to finish and MS $30 thanks to the $25 pit pass! Drops were smaller also so it was a win win situation all the way around!

Eldridge moved to 12^th in the MS season point standings and Landry up to 20^th. With a triple header week-end coming up the standings could change a great deal over the 3 days!  Justin Stump moved to 3^rd in the season point standings for karts and his father Bill moved to 5^th!

We registered 6 new cars on the day! All in all it was a really terrific night of racing at Mottville and hopefully kicked off a great 2^nd half for us! In the past the 2^nd half of the season has always been our better half!

It was amazing what 2 new tires can do for a race car or in this case race truck! Sutton put two new tires on his truck and suddenly he was within inches of a feature win with some very fast cars!

The weather was great-around 80 and sunny! Now for some more great weather this week-end for a triple header week-end of racing action!