My "photo report" is up on FB. This link should work as I've made the album public, but I think you still have to be logged in to FB get it. Let me know if it isn't working. (or just find Trevor Van Leeuwen on FB and friend me.) FB is a little less time consuming on my end for photos....since they changed Photobucket it drags my computer to a crawl and even posting a couple pics here takes ages, so FB it is.
Anyway...man what a fun day at the races yesterday. I was focusing more on getting neat pics yesterday and less on who was qualifying where, but all day it looked like Pritiko was gonna be the guy to beat and he didn't dissapoint.
Early on it was Cox and Pritiko taking off from the field as Urlin, Kennedy and Quarrie battled for 3rd. Quarrie was fast, qualified well and looking good, but ended up turned around in turn 2 after a shmozzle with Urlin and Kennedy. Kennedy sent to the back for his part in it. This was about lap 20.
Kennedy ended up working his way back up to the front and by about lap 80 he was ready to strike and took the lead. He was the guy in front when the competition yellow came out at lap 94, and of course he opted to chance on the big money by accepting the "restart at the back" challenge.
2nd half was when things got interesting. Pritiko was a rocket and left the field behind for a while. Kennedy was racing his way up and settled into 4th behind Pritiko, Cox and Thompson. There he stayed for a while, apparently biding his time, then he picked gingerly past Thompson, then manhandled his way around Cox to take 2nd.
But it looked for a while like he had given all he had and didn't have anything else left for Pritiko. Pritiko began walking away from Kennedy and so it went until about 30 to go when Kennedy finally showed his cards and began to reel Pritiko in again. These two guys were a dead heat for while, running 1 and 2 bumper to bumper. In the closing laps Kennedy tried everything to get around Pritiko. Gave him the bumper a couple times and Matt almost lost it once, but Pritiko hung on.
Then things started going south for a few other guys, prompting a few restarts and eventually a couple green white checker attempts - with a few false starts and some gamesmanship between the top 2 guys. Cox ended up going around into the fence in turn 3, and on one restart Demelo and Quarrie both ended up eating the wall on the frontstretch. Quarrie's quote: "What happened? I got taken out by the track owner is what happened."
Anyway, it came down to Pritiko and Kennedy and Pritiko prevailed. Yeah there was some hard charging but Kennedy basically raced him clean. (not sure if anyone noticed, but the moment that Jesse got into him and got him loose in 2, Jesse also backed out and let him collect it...or so it looked where I was sitting.)
Anyway, the victory goes to Pritiko this year, and he drove an amazing race. No fluke...he earned it.
Shawn Thompson dug and dug all day and went from the back to the front a couple of times and was able to muster a 5th place.
Visitor Brad Corcoran from Flamboro Speedway got a 4th, serving up notice that the Flamboro guys can definitely compete here.
Kris Lawrence in his retrofitted Super Stock kept digging and ended up in the top 10 finishing tenth...and that car was looking a little rough by the end of the day.
Stephen Richmond want looking too shabby in the early going but had to bow out with a "throttle linkage problem" (gas pedal broke)
Cole Powell didn't start as fast as he would have liked, and only had his day get worse when the rearend blew up leaving him dead on the fronstretch.
And hey...score one more for the Good Guys from WIndsor as Lloyd Rawlings took checkers in the second heat race too.
Definitely a great race day. The weather was all you could ask for and it was a hell of a race. The crowd was, I'm sure, a little lighter than the brass would have liked, but it was a Saturday afternoon...they obviously weren't that worried about crowd size. (they just can't have not known)
I can tell you for sure though that the fans that were there were definitely on their feet. We were sitting in front of an older couple that are regular at Flamboro and they were having a ball. Personally I've never been a fan of contrived stuff like green white checker, and the whole BS with guys faking each other out and causing restarts......but the crowd ate it up, and that's all that matters (Jesse Kennedy's quote in victory lane got some laughs: "Well, I always thought green meant go, but hey...shit happens I guess.")
It was just a really, really awesome day all told.