Tracks: Irwindale Speedway Weekend Race Report
23 October 2000
Troy Regier lost the 30-lap Supermodfied Racing League feature race at Irwindale Speedway on Saturday night by half an inch ... Starting from the last row on the grid, because of a tire change after his qualifying heat, the Dinuba, (Calif.) resident, track record holder, and fastest-qualifier, simply shot through the fourteen-car field picking up positions on every lap. By halfway through lap 12 Regier had blown past the entire field and ensconced himself firmly in the lead with Jim Birges and Joe Gosek in the chase, if not in the hunt, running second and third. While Regier was busying himself with vanishing into the distance, the Fresno-based Birges and Oswego, New York's Gosek had a fine battle over second. The runner-up position finally went to Gosek who made a daring last lap pass in a car that the East coast Super Modified driving legend had never even sat in before race morning. Unfortunately all the on-track drama between the first three racers went for naught, as first Regier, then Birges, and then Gosek, were all disqualified for various post-race technicalities. Car width in the first two cases, and the muffler protruding too far past the plane of the left side tires in the third. The belated SRL win went to Fort Lupton, Colorado's Scott Schmidt, who had finished fourth on the racecourse but found himself accepting the winner's laurels long after most of the rain-shrunk crowd of 4,926 had headed home thinking they had seen series champion Regier drive to a spectacular victory from the last row. Rookie Schmidt, who only this year had graduated from go-karts to the 800-horsepower SRL cars, was philosophical about the win, indicating that he's rather prevail on the track as opposed to in the tech shed, but that he'd "take it" and look forward to even better things in his sophomore season next year. Eric Silsby, from Dinuba, was second in Regier's back up car, with Salt Lake City driver, Dave Adamson rounding out the top three. In other featured events Riverside's Todd Burns won a rain-delayed and crash-filled NASCAR Late Model main event that saw what were the second, third and fourth place cars behind Burns piling up in turn totally scrambling the finish handing Steve Floyd from Cathedral City and Lakeside's Steve Carver second and third place respectively in the twice-truncated 73-lap affair. T.K. Karvasek, of North Hills, won the 35-lap NASCAR Super Stock main by fending off strong, racelong attacks from divisional champion Jeff Green of Long Beach. Riverside's Bob Reed won a rain-shortened NASCAR Mini-Stock event originally scheduled for 30 laps but flagged at the end of eighteen due to a squall that caused Irwindale's first-ever rain delay (lasting 37 minutes). Bill Hoagland of Santee followed Reed to the checker, with Bellflower's Terry Limberopoulos in the "show" position when the rains came. Robbie Brand from Barstow won the American Race Trucks main event with Steve Shaw from Huntington Beach second, and Las Vegas' Terry Young coming in second and third. Shaw had the lead off the final turn when he and Brand touched sending Shaw enough sideways for Brand to slip past for the win. While track records were anticipated, even predicted, in both the Supermodified and Late Model divisions, none were toppled there. However, Steve Shaw did give the crowd a thrill by ripping off a new track record of 20.705 seconds in the American Race Truck division, bettering the old mark of 20.916 set in August of this year. All in all it was a "strange" night of racing at Irwindale Speedway, rain delays, many nasty-looking crashes (happily none of which required medical attention for the drivers … but which "hurt" many an automobile), a track record in the "wrong" class, and the disqualification of the first three finishers in the featured main event sometime after most of the fans had left the stadium … Must have been a full moon.