ASCS sprinters to visit JMS Friday

http://www.yorknewstimes.com/stories/062607/sports_ascssprinters.shtml

By News-Times Staff

MCCOOL JUNCTION -- The ASCS Midwest Region sprint cars will head to Junction Motor Speedway in McCool Junction this Friday, June 29 for their final visit of 2007.

Twenty-two-year-old Natalie Sather from Fargo, N.D., is leading the ASCS Midwest points standings over 2006 ASCS Northern Plains Regional Champion Chuck Swenson of Watertown, S.D.

In a May 25 appearance this season at JMS, Sather snaked her teal No. 94 machine back-to-front through much of the 20-car field for a finish of fifth in the 20-lap ASCS/NCRA sprint A-feature.

Sather, who began racing at age 11, has run the exciting open-wheelers the past five years.

Former York resident Don Droud, Jr., who now drives out of Lincoln, rounds out the top five in ASCS Midwest 360 sprint points. He, too, will be on the JMS track come Friday night.

Friday's special show is Moses Motor Company Night at JMS. The York auto dealer, owned by sprint car enthusiast Steve Moses, is sponsoring a unique card of racing that will bring two classes of throwback coupes and sedans from racing's heyday in the 40s and 50s to the dirt oval, too, to join the sprinters.

Moses said the sprint car show itself is a special event.

"It's a little bit like when the big cars would come to the state fair, that was the only time most people got to see them. Our sponsorship is mostly just helping the track" bring the powerful machines to the York area, however Moses plans promotional activities, including prizes to be won and "a couple surprises for the crowd. We're going to sponsor a hard luck award, too," he said. "We're going to call it the Build Ford Tough-Tough Luck Award." The award will go to a racer who blows an engine, crashes or otherwise "has a bad night," said Moses.

"I think the kind of racing open-wheelers do is different from stock cars," Moses said. "The passing is different" because the stock car wheels are enclosed in the fenders. "They don't have to be as precise" when passing as drivers with all four wheels exposed. "With sprint cars you can't be doing that (trading paint, rubbing donuts on each other and banging together). If you tangle wheels with a sprint car, somebody gets launched. 'Dirt-sky-dirt-sky,' That's what the drivers tell you they see" during the tumbling rollovers unique to open-wheelers. Moses said fans will see the thundering 360 sprinters run 110 to 120 miles per hour Friday night at McCool.

Hot laps on the fast 3/8-mile dirt oval get underway Friday at 6:30 p.m. with racing beginning at 7:30.