surfnsprint

So when Saturday broke clear and hot in Ventura, we jumped in the truck, put on that outlaw country station and blew up to Hanford. About ten million cars thirty songs and 101 degrees later we pulled into Kings Speedway and I got my first look. Man, that’s a beautiful track. It’s as wide as an LA freeway with these sweet, enticing banked ends. They were laying water down and everything just looked all groomed and perfect. It kinda looked like a cool oasis in the middle of that blazing afternoon.

We hooked up with our crew and tried to stay in the shade. It was hot, not unbearable, but hot. I felt sorry for the drivers; it was a regular rapid weight loss plan. You could hear their boots squishing when they walked by.

Watching the time trials was a lot of fun. It’s great watching the drivers when they have the track to themselves. Clean lines and fast times. Wakim and Kierce were looking really fast. What else is new? Chris D’Arcy grabbed the fastest time with 16.137. Moon bounced hard on the back side of the berm. Greg Taylor never made it out of the trials, his engine was overheating and he decided he couldn’t race. Word filtered up into the stands that he was out. I felt held up, robbed and cheated and we hadn’t even started. It’s no race without Greg dicing it up. Like chips without salsa.

The heats were fun, Blake and Steve were standouts and you could see that the VRA and the bandits were evenly matched. The announcer was having a bit of a hard time. It was Chris Wakey, Kevin Kourse and a bunch of other characters I never heard of. Trust me, by the end of the evening, they had a couple of the names down real good.

The modifieds are a lot more fun to watch on a track like that, they can really open up and go. But I’m a sprint fan and finally they got to the main event.

By now the track was harder than superman’s elbow. The air had cooled to a pleasant summer evening. They finally got all the cars lined up (like herding cats). The June bugs were spinning lazily around the arc lights. It was a beautiful sight as those drivers filed double wide past the Kings Speedway sign in the backstretch with the American flag fluttering in the breeze. Hammer down.

At the beginning, it was rough as everybody was trying to figure out what worked. But most of the guys that got up front at the beginning stayed up front throughout the race. Greg Porte and Peter Murphy were running up there, along with Clark Templeman (nice to see Clark up front again), Wakim, Kierce and Miller. Miller charged hard a couple of times, but couldn’t sustain. Stansberry disappeared somewhere during the middle of the race. Wakim landed in somebody’s lap and had to go to the back at about lap 20.

Amazing that he started in the back at lap 20 and ended up fifth or sixth, depending on which newspaper you read.

But the real story this warm central valley night was Kevin Kierce. After watching Peter Murphy (fantastic driver) and Clark Templeman hold positions 1 and 2 for most of the race, Kevin got down and began putting the pressure on about lap 22 or so. By lap 27 he was in control and the crowd where I was sitting was going nuts. Didn’t matter who you pitted for, it was Kevin versus the Bandits and we were all screaming like kids. Murphy was desperately looking for a way to get back around him, but Kierce wasn’t having any of it. He was in total control (despite no brakes) as he smashed the checkered flag. It was just great driving. After the race, Murphy (in a very gracious and charming Australian brogue) commented that “things were going rather well, when where in the hell did this yellow car come from?!” Everyone was laughing at that.

After all that fun, we decided to head out and have a bit more. The chief criminal in our gang led us to a decidedly eclectic bar called The Cottage. It had the drunkest band I’ve ever heard, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Everybody had some cold ones until finally the girls put their foot down and dragged us all up to dance. The evening ended with a well liked VRA driver tearing off his shirt and playing the bongos onstage with the band. As the owner was showing us out, he was muttering something about “outotowners”.

We trooped back into the Comfort Inn about 2:00 am looking for some well deserved rest. No sooner had we snuggled in than the fire alarm went off at 3:00 am. The strobe lights and siren worked real well. And just in case you didn’t get it, it went off again at 6 am. When I was checking out, I told the receptionist I wanted my money back. She patiently explained to me that although the fire alarm system had malfunctioned, it was there for our safety. I don’t think I properly thanked her.

Before leaving town, we scrambled around and found a nice little breakfast joint called Chubby’s. Over coffee and eggs, I cracked the sports page of the Hanford Sentinel, where the mid page headlines acknowledged “VRA driver takes top spot in Grand Slam race at Kings”. The writer went on to blithely describe how the VRA’s Joe Henderson captured the main event.

We were cracking up all the way back to Ventura County.

Way to go, Kevin.

posted: 9:44 AM