From Starks Racing PR
Puyallup, WA — (October 19, 2012) — Trey Starks has competed in some of the biggest events in sprint car racing this year. From the Knoxville National to the Kings Royal to Dirt Cup to the Mini Gold Cup, he added some marquee events to his racing resume. He has one “biggie” on his schedule this year and it’s the largest and most prestigious 360-sprint car race in the state of California — the Trophy Cup at Thunderbowl Raceway.
The winged sprint car portion of the 19th Annual Southwest Contractors Trophy Cup at Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, Calif., is set for Friday, Oct. 19 and Saturday, Oct. 20, with all proceeds from the event benefitting the Make-a-Wish Foundation.
“Trophy Cup has most of the best drivers from across the country at it,” said Starks. “It is certainly a tough race, but we have high expectations going into it. We’ve made the main event both years we’ve gone to it. With it being 50 laps, you have to have a lot of endurance and stamina and some luck as well to run the whole race. The racing is always good and the event itself is always a lot of fun and for a good cause.”
Last season in the Trophy Cup, Starks qualified for the main event each of the two nights that he was in action with a stout field of nearly 70 cars in attendance. He finished 13th in the 50-lap finale after a late race accident and was 19th and on the lead lap in the 30-lap opener.
“Tulare is a third-mile, but with its tight turns, it races like every other California short track,” noted the third-generation driver. “You have to drive that track hard, especially when the cushion gets up against the fence. You can’t be afraid to bang it into the curb when one develops up top, which is usually pretty quick.”
The 16-year-old has made three starts at the high-banked one-third-mile bullring this season, with each of those coming with a 410-cubic inch engine under the hood of his family-owned No. 55. He finished seventh at Thunderbowl Raceway on May 12, in the finale of the two-night King of the West Sprint Car Series event.
In his first appearance of the season at Tulare with the World of Outlaws on March 16, Starks finished 13th after starting 22nd. He earned the KSE Hard Charger Award that night, after passing the most cars in the 40-lap main event. Starks would go on to pick up the KSE Hard Charger Award two more times with the series in 2012. In his start with the Outlaws at Tulare, he finished seventh in the first 10-lap heat race, after opening the night 22nd in time trials.
“We have a lot of laps at Tulare as well as just tracks in California in general this year, so that should help going into this weekend,” he noted. “The surface is usually really wet with all the cars they have there. Normally Tulare will be hooked, a little rough and very fast the first day, and then usually it slicks off the second day. You really have to be on top of it in qualifying, because that can put you in a good position for the rest of the weekend.”
Last weekend, Starks raced with the King of the West Sprint Car Series at Kings Speedway in Hanford, Calif., in the historic Cotton Classic. He came up just one spot short of qualifying for the main event, finishing fifth in the B-main. The high school junior opened the night in the second heat race, where he finished sixth, again coming up just one spot short of transferring into the A-Feature.
Starks has run a combination of 360- and 410-sprint car races this season with a number of different series and sanctions, scoring two wins, and 17 Top-10 finishes, or which 14 have been Top-Five showings, including 12 podium finishes. He has visited a number of tracks for the first time in his career, including making a couple of trips to the Midwest with the World of Outlaws to race at the famed Eldora Speedway in Ohio, legendary Knoxville Raceway in Iowa, as well as Junction Motor Speedway in Nebraska, and Red River Valley Speedway and River Cities Speedway, both in North Dakota. He also raced with the UNOH All Star Circuit of Champions at Southern Iowa Speedway in the Front Row Challenge.
The Trophy Cup will serve as the final weekend of racing for the native of Puyallup, Wash., this season, which has seen him race over 50 times at 18 different tracks in nine states.
Trey Starks and Starks Racing would like to thank their valued partners: BR Motorsports, FX Signs, King Racing Products, Masco Petroleum, Northwest Powerdercoating & Sandblasting, Starks Timber Processing and T&C Concepts.
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