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Ventura Raceway: Weir rides fast track to sprint car victory
Scotty Weir earned his third USAC/CRA sprint car feature win Saturday night as the series made its final 2007 stop at Ventura Raceway.
On a fast track, there was only one yellow flag in the 30-lap feature. Damion Gardner started on the pole, but had to settle for fifth.
Rip Williams came into Ventura with 101 sprint car career wins and finished second. Mike Spencer was third. Troy Rutherford, who has three VRA sprint car wins, was fourth.
Cory Kruseman was sixth.
Danny Sheridan, Blake Miller, Brian Camarillo and Rickie Gaunt rounded out the top 10. The field featured 21 cars.
Weir said the bottom line of the track was working for him while Williams was coming off the higher dirt.
Williams was pleased with his performance.
"I'm just happy to be here and I'm out here to have a good time," said Williams, who will one day be the No. 1 sprint car driver in the CRA series. He is two victories shy of tying Dean Thompson's record 103 wins.
Williams said he has no plans of stopping his racing career and remains a threat every night when he's behind the wheel.
Josh Ford, Kruseman, Dennis Rodriguez and Garrett Hansen were heat winners.
Sheridan won the semi main. Tony Jones was second and David Cardey was third. Tyler Brown was fourth and Jimmy Crawford fifth.
Danny Faria Jr. won the last chance six-lap feature. VRA points leader Greg Taylor was second and Alex Shutte was third.
Blake Miller, a former Ventura Racing Association sprint car champion, won the 17th annual Wagsdash after he started 13th in the 15-lap race. Brian Camarillo was second and Jimmy Crawford, a former VRA champion, was third. Kevin Kierce, second in the 2007 VRA sprint car series, was fourth and Bobby Michnowicz was fifth.
Seventeen drivers started in the race to provide an opportunity for hard-luck racers to celebrate success.
Bruce Douglass earned a wire-to-wire win in the 10-lap VRA senior sprint car feature. Rob Kershaw was second. Ron Tjaarda, Richard McCormick and Tim Moon rounded out the top five.
Steve Stasa, John Richards and Brian Williams won heat races.
Danny Miller is the points leader with 2,435. Douglass is second in points with 2,385. Wiley Miller is third with 2,365. Stasa is fourth with 2,335 points. Bob Alderman is fifth in points with 2,110, but has raced only 11 times. The top four drivers have 12 starts.
Ventura Raceway's Jim Naylor was presented his award as the 2006 Promoter of the Year by the Sprint Car Racing Hall of Fame, located in Knoxville, Iowa. Director Tom Schmeh was on hand to present Naylor the award. This is Naylor's 30th season as promoter and announcer.
"This is for everybody," said Naylor of the award. "We love our sprint car racing."
Kenny Wagner, the Wagsdash race founder, presented Alan Ballard with his 2006 award.
Ventura Raceway will be dark Saturday night. The Bandit-VRA Grand Slam sprint car series will run in Santa Maria on Saturday along with the VRA dwarf car series.
The sprint cars return to the Ventura County Fairgrounds track on Oct. 20.




Posted by lori on October 8, 2007 at 8:34 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Where are some pictures?????
Posted by raticalls6 on October 8, 2007 at 10:06 a.m. (Suggest removal)
http://www.wagtimes.com/
Posted by raticalls6 on October 8, 2007 at 10:17 a.m. (Suggest removal)
and here, http://www.vrafan.com/
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