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Santa Maria
Speedway,
4-30-10
The Taco Bravo 360 Series left
town and headed to the Santa Maria Speedway this
week. So you know what that means……ROAD
TRIP!!!
So me and my buddy, former
driver/car owner Earle Stanton, took off and buzzed
on down HWY 101 like foxes chasing a hound because
you never know WTF will happen when you take a local
series and send it to a new track for the first
time! Bruce Velo, who usually pulls camera duty, was
on call for jury duty and I bet he felt it was a
load of doggie dootie that he couldn’t make it.
Santa Maria Speedway is wider
across the infield than Ocean Speedway and the track
is wider, so I guess listing it as a third mile
track is pretty accurate. The track staff were all
great to us and made us feel right at home. They
even let us go up in the announcers booth and if you
go through the booth there is a covered porch that
is off to the side with chairs where you can get a
good birds eye view of things. That was great since
without Bruce, I was now pulling camera duty. That
is REALLY a bunch of dootie since I normally stay
away from that! Basically because I have never done
it and usually am involved with what I do best,
talking and telling people what I think! Oh yeah,
and the main reason I don’t do camera is because I
don’t have a clue on how to operate the freak’in
thing! So before I left I got a quick lesson from
Bruce. He made it real simple. He said this it how
you turn it on and off and this is the button you
push to record. DON’T TOUCH NOTHING ELSE!!! I told
him not to worry, that I would figure every thing
out. He told me I would have a lot more to figure
out if I @!#$’ed anything up. Ok, button 1 and
button 2…got it. Can you write that down for me?
LOL! So with that settled, when we got to the track
I promptly handed the camera to Earle and said “just
point and shoot, it’s easy!” That’s how that works!
I used to be Earle’s crew chief at one time, so he
is used to me putting him in unfamiliar situations
and telling him he can do it!
So we head out to talk to some
people and see what is up. Some drivers who normally
don’t run the Taco Bravo Series were on hand. Jon
Allard was there with a new 360, Willie Croft, Zack
Zimmerly, Alissa Geving and Davey Pombo were there
to compete with the 360’s and also to run their
410’s with the GSC the next day. We got to find that
Pombo and Pete Murphy, who was also there,
are kind of team cars. They are both sponsored by
George Snider and Jr Bowman of Buster and Ziggy
Enterprises. George is a legendary dirt and indy car
driver from CA and has always gone by the nick name
“Ziggy” and Jr is “Buster”. Any way, let me just say
we got some interviews with people and walked around
and stuff. Our normal deal. I got better things to
talk about here, so let me move on!
I gotta say it was great for
promoter Chris Kearns to have the series down and I
am sorry I didn’t get to talk with him since he was
busy.
When cars went out for wheel
packs it was apparent right away that the track was
dry. Now it has been close to 25-30 years since I
have been down there except for one trip maybe 5-7
years ago. I remembered the place as being wet early
and at times drying out. Sometimes it could go
either way. So I was hoping there was some moisture
down in it that might come up as cars ran on it.
That didn’t happen. Even though the track crew did
some work after modified hot laps before the sprints
even hit the track, the place started to go blue
groove before qualifying. Late qualifying draw was
the thing to have because the track started to
rubber and got faster. Reworking of track again
after qualifying got it a bit greasy, but after the
modified heats, it was starting to blue up again for
the sprint heats. Don’t think I am ragging on the
place, because I am not, they were trying, and like
we saw at Ocean the week before with the GSC race
before they reworked the track, things happen. Any
way after the heats they brought some drivers out on
the track in front of the fans and did some
interviews with them. I missed that part because I
was back in the pits talking with people and doing
interviews. Oh, I forgot to say that me and Earle
tried videoing some hot laps and heats and were
cussing the heck out of Bruce because neither one of
us could manage to keep a car in a shot around the
track. We found that my worst was better that
Earle’s best, so I was now back to being the camera
guy. I guess Earle ain’t so dumb after all. So I got
the hang of it and shot the heats and stuff. They
had a motor cycle jumping exhibition at intermission
before the mains and that was kind of neat to see a
couple of guys jumping ramp to ramp and doing some
tricks.
It was neat to be up by the
booth and be able to stick my head around and get
some shots of GT and the other staff and scorers.
There are no windows in the booth there so I could
mess with everyone in there. Like I said, the staff
was great to us.
Jon Allard and Anthony Simone,
who were in the B main had motor problems and
scratched. Alissa Geving I believe was scheduled to
be in the B main as well, but I saw her and her dad
in the stands before the B main and they said they
were done. I didn’t find out why. So with cars
scratching, the B main was dropped and the 23 cars
that were left all were in the main.
The rubber that the sprints had
put down had been smoothed off and shined up by the
modifieds, so it was going to take some laps to hope
the sprints got some rubber down across the track to
make it more racy. At least cars were running all
over the track and laying rubber in more than just
one groove. There was some good racing in the pack
and there was some freight training going on. I keep
reminding people that this is not a race report and
I am not a journalist, so I will let Gary Thomas
fill in the details with his race report. Still the
pass for the lead late in the race by Bud Kaeding on
Tommy Tarlton, and then Bud getting caught up with a
lapped car and flipping to a stop just feet before
crossing the finish line on the last lap were the
highlights of the event. And guess what? I got the
finish on tape and it turned out great! Thank god I
didn’t blow that deal!
So Tommy won and because Bud
didn’t cross the line he was scored 14th.
Now all of that has to be said as unofficial since
the Taco Bravo Series officials have not posted
official results yet. The scoring and everything is
still done by hand at Santa Maria and scoring notes
and sheets I am sure are being reviewed by officials
to determine everything and then they will have to
manually load stuff into their program or what ever
they do to get the results and points out. So we
need to give them some time to do that. All that
info will be posted on this site as well as
www.oceanspeedway.com when available. Also by my
unofficial calculations, Pete Murphy started 14th
and got 3rd and if that is true he would
be the “Fully Charged with Sun Electric” hard
charger. Oh wait, I just got an email from Samantha
Harper at Ocean and she says she has some stuff
posted and that yes Pete is hard charger and gets
the $100 for it. So thanks Samantha I will take a
look, and congrats to Pete Murphy for being “Fully
Charged” with Sun Electric. I have to admit, when
talking with Jeff Delte from Sun Electric and
wondering what to call the award, the “fully
charged” thing with Sun Electric sounded like too
cool a name to pass up. LOL! Ah, I’m so easily
amused!
Well since we have the hard
charger confirmed, I might as well list my award
picks for the event. Nobody gets anything for it,
except the pleasure of being named! It is all just
for good natured fun.
Ok, we had the hard charger so
I will make a pick for the hard luck award. I pick
Jon Allard. Jon was making his first start of the
year with a 360 and I believe passed up running at chico to come have engine
problems in his heat after running just a few laps.
I didn’t get to ask him or Ashley Smith (his crew
chief) what happened, but GT said they had some push
rod problems. Like always, others had their problems
too, but I think Jon had the hard luck of the night.
Ok what am I going to do now? I
think I am going to invent another award because I
think it is needed here. I am going to give a “way
to go!” award and split it between two winners.
Those would be the cars that came to run the Taco
Bravo event at Santa Maria, and the fans that showed up.
Although I have to admit quite a few fans in the
main area below the booth left after the modified
main (WTF was up with
that?)
it was nice to see the amount of teams that
participated and it was nice to see the fans line
the stands and set up lawn chairs on either side of
the main grandstands up on the walk area to watch.
The fans in the lawn chairs
stayed till the end of the sprint main. (again, WTF
was up with the ones that left?) Any way, I think
the teams and the fans deserve a “way to go” for
supporting the race.
I have to give another underdog
of the race award this week, and I have to give it
to the same driver and team as last week. I really
don’t like to make a habit of consecutive awards for
the same thing because I think everyone deserves a
shot at getting mentioned for something, but I had
to do this because it is deserved. Eric Rossi and
his owner Chase Wood and their team get the underdog
award for the second week in a row. I don’t know how
long I can consider them underdogs if they keep
having good runs. Eric had a 10th place
qualifying run and won his heat race. He then
finished 5th in the main. At this time he
is shown in 3rd place in series points.
For a lesser funded team, that deserves mention. So
congrats to Eric and Chase and Henry and everyone
else on the team for being the underdogs to keep an
eye on.
I have to give my hero of the
week award to Tommy Tarlton. Not just because he won
and the winner is always a hero, but because after
getting passed for the lead late in the race he came
back and drove the crap out of the car and put
enough pressure on the leader, Bud Kaeding, that it
put Bud in a position to have to push so hard that
he got caught up in a wreck that let Tommy get the
win. As a side note Tommy swept the GSC race the
next night at the same track to make it two winning
nights in a row at
Santa Maria. So Tommy could
be the hero of the weekend.
Ok where there is a hero you
know there is a zero, and I gotta do it. My award
for zero is another hero to zero award, and you had
to see this one coming. Bud Kaeding gets the award
this week. I got nothing against nobody, but I gotta
call them like they are. Bud was a hero last race
and crashed out to a 14th place this
week. Sorry Bud but that really is hero to zero.
Also Bud ran a great A main and stalked Tommy and
made a great pass for the lead and timed everything
right…except for the last turn on the last lap. Bud
got jammed up behind lapped cars on the bottom of
the track and with Tommy making a bonzai run around
him, he did his best to try to get by the lapped
cars. He didn’t make it. It was close, but he got
into a lapped car and flipped, landing just short of
the finish line on the last lap. It was just hard
racing and all but still it didn’t work out so well
for Bud. The Sala/Matherly team races to win and I
know they are all disappointed. When I saw Bud after
the race he asked me if I got it on video, I told
him yes but I don’t know how to work the play back
and I didn’t want to mess things up.(remember the
explanation of all that earlier?) he asked me if I
thought he crossed the line and I had to say that
from where I was, it didn’t look like it. I said I
at first figured he got at least second, but after
realizing where he landed, I had to say I didn’t
think he made it. The video is posted on the photo
page of this site, so you can look at it and see
what you think. The timing lights for qualifying
were set up just past the flag man, so I would call
that the start finish line. Since the track doesn’t
use electronic scoring or transponders, there is no
electronic record to go by. So unless the finish is
reversed, Bud is my hero to zero of the week. But
just think, there is no place to go but up from
here!
So now that I have probably
managed to piss off
a nationally ranked driver and one who has a
chance of making some history by winning four silver
crown dirt car championships in a row, I think I
will end this. Hope to see you all at Ocean this
Fri. May 7th for the next Ocean Sprints presented by
Taco Bravo Series event. Where you can bet I will be
buzz'n around ocean.
News Flash!!!
It appears that after an over
night review, Bud Kaeding has been deemed to have
crossed the finish line on the last lap at
Santa Maria
after all. That will move him back up to a second
place finish. That is great for Bud, but it shoots
my hero to zero all to hell! LOL. In light of that,
I will remove Bud as the zero. Still I don’t want to
just drop Bud like a hot potato and hurt his
feelings! So I will create a special award that is
more fitting. I will give Bud the “ping-pong” of the
night award instead. Since it seems he now has gone
from running second for most of the race, to passing
for the lead, then pinging off of Shawn Wright and
bouncing to a stop at what was first deemed to be
short of the finish line and sent back to 14th
place, then ponging back up to be declared finishing
second, I think the ping-pong award will work!!
Still that leaves no zero
award, and I like the zero award! So since I am the
one who seems to have jumped the gun on this, I will
give the zero award to myself this week! So I guess
I can go no place but up from here. (unless I come
up with a sub-zero award!!?) Hey, that gets me thinking…………
News Flash #2!!!
Ok, now it seems that two
things have happened.
1.
Santa Maria Speedway
seems to have a rule stating this:
Video tapes
and SMS video replays will in no way influence or
change the decisions made by track officials.
2.
Santa Maria
officials, it seems, over reached their authority in
making their call, as it is the Taco Bravo race
director who’s shoulders that falls upon.
In light of that,
the results of the Taco Bravo main event at
Santa Maria
have been adjusted
again, and will revert back to the original decision.
I also found this
in the Ocean Speedway general rules since this last
decision was made and would think it would apply to
the sprints where ever they raced:
No protest will be
accepted that is directed at a decision of an
Official or supervisory Official, including but not
limited to timing and scoring decisions, tech or
safety inspections and race procedure decisions.
Soooo…… that
means I gotta change my buzz report
AGAIN!!
Bud has been
through enough, and I’m not going to be the one that
makes him the zero again! (even I have my limits)
Also, I don’t see why I should be stuck with the
zero, since my first report reflects what the
ultimate out come seems to be. (I keep saying seems,
and looks like, because this seems to be the race
that never ends!)
I’m thinking that
I’m just going to pull the zero award altogether
this week. Still, I’m so pissed that I had to keep
changing this and updating the Ocean Sprints site,
that I gotta take something out on someone! So I am
going to invoke the afore mention
sub-zero
award and give it to Santa Maria Speedway. Now I
have nothing against them, or their people, but for
seeming to disregard their own rules and for over
stepping their bounds in making decisions with
regard to the Taco Bravo Series, Santa Maria
Speedway gets the sub-zero award this week.
I hope to hell this
is the end of this mess!
See you at the races, Buzz Rightrear.
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