By T.J. Buffenbarger
Essexville, MI — (06/20/2001) — Boston Reid thrilled the crowd in his hometown of Kokomo, Indiana Sunday night by winning the GLOSS sprint car feature at the Kokomo Speedway. Boston, who graduated June 8th from High School, was still on cloud nine Monday about the big win.
“It was the biggest win of my career. I had never really been able to race in front of all my friends before, and this time they were able to come out and see me win. I could not have asked for any more”.
Reid worked his way up from the 13th starting position and passed Brett Mann with less than 10 laps to go with all four wheels off the ground after riding the infield berm I turn three. Boston went on the capture the feature event.
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Brett Mann had one of his best short track runs going in recent memory at Kokomo Sunday night. Mann won his heat race, and won the Dash to start on the pole for the feature event. Brett has openly admitted that at times the track at Kokomo has had his number, as have many short tracks, but on this night Mann led a good portion of the feature before spinning after Boston Reid shot into the lead.
Even though he has only been out to race a handful of times, Mann has been all over the country tire testing for Hoosier and recently returned for a test at the Lincoln Speedway in Pennsylvania. The testing laps seem to have made Mann improve with each time out. Hopefully fans will be able to see Brett display his enhanced skills more this season.
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The B-Main event on Sunday was dubbed “The B-Main from Hell” as it took over 90 minuets to run the semi feature due to several flips and incidents.
The wildest incident involved Indiana regular Tom Davies. Davies was running around 9th position in the B-Main when GLOSS officials all of a sudden wanted Davies to the tail, even though he was ahead of three of the cars on the track. Davies held his position as the cars came to the cone, and the restart was aborted. Davies then was black flagged to the confusion of the fans on hand.
When Davies stopped to ask why he was black flagged, a fireman came up to the car and apparently didn’t like Davies disposition, and started to hit Tom while he was still strapped in the racecar. The fireman had to be restrained while Davies exited his car wanting a piece of the fireman, and for good reason. This was very unusual at Davies is one of the most laid back drivers in the pit area at most racetracks.
Davies sat out the rest of the event in the infield, and after the event while being pushed into the pits received a standing ovation from the large crowd on hand as he had done nothing wrong and GLOSS officials made a rather absurd call. We still have not heard if the new track owner Dan will have the track worker back to the track.
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Rumors were circulating that Sunday would be the last GLOSS event ever, but Jerry Slade has announced the series will go on this week at Hartford. With a great 37 car field on hand, and what onlookers thought was one of the biggest crowds at Kokomo in the past three years, GLOSS will solder on for the rest of the 2001 campaign.
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Unfortunately the event at Gas City I-69 Speedway, one of the most anticipated events of the GLOSS tour, will not be able to be rescheduled. With as smooth and tacky as Gas City has been in recent weeks everyone was curious and looking forward to seeing how fast the winged 410 sprint cars would be. However, promoter Jiggs Thomason explained his weekly traditional sprint car shows draw around 40 cars per night, and rightly feels he should not take a date away from his regulars that support him all year. Although rescheduling has not been entirely ruled out, the prospect of it looks very unlikely.
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Terry Pletch had a rough night actually getting upside down twice in the same program. Pletch has had very bad luck befall him with the wing this year, as so far we have seen him upside down three times and also bent a wheel while inline for at least a top three finish at the Goodyear Master’s Classic at Knoxville Raceway.
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New Kokomo owner Dan Duncan has made many improvements to the Kokomo Speedway including a victory lane in the pit area, and enclosing the walkways under the grandstand so fans no longer have to dodge various dropping objects while walking to and from their seats and the pit area.
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Third generation driver Kraig Kinser made his Kokomo debut under the watchful eyes of uncle Randy and father Bob. It was cool to have a chance to hang out with the Kinser clan a bit at the track after being introduced by McCreary tire guru Tom Chalk. . Rumor had it that one would have needed some waders to walk around with all the stories being tossed about. The Kinser’s made their way out to Kokomo after hanging out at the Chalk estate where Kraig went on to finish third in the feature event.
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2000 Kokomo track champion Tony Jarrett made his first start of the 2001 season after thought to have been sitting out the entire year. Jarrett made the feature event and finished in the 9th position.
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The night’s action was sponsored by radio station Q95 out of Indianapolis, which serves as the home station of the nationally syndicated “Bob and Tom Show”. Kristi Lee made a personal appearance at the track and gave away concert tickets with track announcer Kimb Stewart before the races began.