By TJ Buffenbarger
Travis Whitney’s team was very excited about his performance on Friday night. Finished second in the Channellock Dash to Andy Hillenburg to put him on the outside of the front row for the feature event. Whitney jumped into the lead until Steve Kinser was able to pass the rookie of the year candidate in turn one. Whitney then jumped the cushion and caved in the floorboard on his Maxim chassis. Travis’s crew was also lucky on the weather as they were down to their last engine and were hoping for rain on Saturday.
Mox Motorsports with driver Joey Saldana will be using Fisher Chevy power for the rest of the season as the team has decided to not go with the Mopar engine. The team had been going back and forth between the motors all season.
Jeff Swindell and TW Motorsports pulled into Eldora with their brand new trailer. Co-Owner Bob Kramer informed us the team was up all night to get the trailer ready to go for Saturday’s event. The TW racing team had a very difficult night as nothing seemed to go right. First the team didn’t hot lap due to switching cars after the motor was off in the first entry. When the team did the car swap they forgot to put the proper electronic scoring transponder on the car and had to come back into the pits to swap the devices. Once the transponders were switched, Swindell blew a left rear tire during his time trial lap on the front stretch. Swindell was unable to transfer to the feature until NRA 360 winner Tim Allison “scratched” from the main event. The action saved the TW team from having to take one of the two provisional spots given during the season for the Pennzoil World of Outlaws teams.
Dean Jacobs night also got off to a rough start as the Holbrook Motorsports team had to change engines. Jacobs was running in a transfer spot during the B-Main until Paul McMahon pulled a wild slide job in turn one. However on Saturday, the team looked optimistic as they were ready for Saturday’s event until the rain started.
Other notables that missed the field on Friday were Jimmy Carr, Brian Paulus, and Terry McCarl.
Gerald Cressman from Hartford, South Dakota ended up with the long haul award for the weekend’s event. Cressman’s crew stayed in the parking lot in back of the grandstands to give some of the Eldora campers a something to go look at before the rain on Saturday while the team was working on the car.
The NRA 360 Sprint Cars made their debut with 28 cars and put on a great feature with double duty driver Tim Allison winning the first feature under the NRA banner.
Word from Limaland Motorsports Park is the infield has now been paved. The Jarvis Brothers have been making many improvements to prepare for their opening race on April 16th.