|
PERRIS, CA-RIS-Tony Jones won his
fifth USAC/CRA feature of the year and moved closer to the series
championship at Perris Auto Speedway with his August 18 feature win.
From a sixth place start Jones moved into the lead by passing both
Mike Spencer and Danny Sheridan on a lap nine restart.
Rip Williams started on the pole for the 30 lap race and led the
first three laps. Caution was called on the fourth lap and Williams
pulled into the work area and then dropped out of the contest.
Michael Spencer took over the lead but lost it to Danny Sheridan on
the restart. Sheridan lead laps four through eight.
On the ninth lap Jeremy Sherman ran into problems as he had engine
problems and pulled to a near stop high in turn two. Sherman jumped
from the cockpit and rolled on the ground while the car continued to
roll down the banking only to be stopped by an alert push truck
driver who moved into his path. Sherman had been burned on his left
foot by hot oil.
On the restart third place Tony Jones got the jump on Spencer for
second place and then surprised Sherman by continuing his passing
line and taking the lead, which he would never loose.
On lap 26 Andy Reinbold spun to a stop in the second turn and
brought out the last caution of the night. This allowed fourth place
Scotty Weir to close on Spencer and helped setup his pass to take
third place on lap 27. Spencer held on to fourth.
The win left Jones with 1441 points with Spencer second with 1257. 
Tony Jones after victory.
In the B
feature Scotty Weir lead all 12 laps with Alan Ballard second and
Jonny Bates third. The heat winners were David Cardey, Rip Williams,
Michael Spencer and Tyler Brown. Rickie Gaunt set fast time with a
17.072 seconds and Jonas Reynolds got the unofficial hard luck award
when he flipped his car in hot laps and ended his night.
The Lucas Oil USAC/CRA Sprint Car Series returns to action in two
weeks with a September first race at Perris.
QUOTES-
TONY JONES: “You can't get out of the gas. You can't be easy
around here. These guys will gobble you up.” “I'll tell you
what. I won this one for my boy Kyle Jones. He just had his spine
surgery this week. And my boy Grady Jones and Tammy Jones for
putting up with me.” “Every night it seems like we have
something to drive for or drive harder for but I give my all, all of
the time. There's nothing else I can give. These guys win the race
in the shop, I'm just the monkey in the saddle. I'm just out here
having fun and am fortunate enough to race on this beautiful
racetrack and have all these great fans come out and watch us!”
DANNY SHERIDAN: “He got a good jump on the restart which helped
him out a whole bunch. We got going pretty good. I can't take it
away from him he was as fast as could be. I've been battling this
cold deal. I got hit Thursday with a cold so I've been running all
night with the thought that I could be throwing up in my helmet.
I've been weak as could be and I'm not holding on too good right now
but it was nice to get a good run in. We had a good run last week at
Santa Maria when we lead the whole thing and lost a tire and it took
a win from us and we lost a motor the last time. We had a 'monkey'
on our back so it was nice just to get a second place finish.”
SCOTTY WEIR: “We got Spencer on a restart and we got going on a
run and Jones was fast towards the middle of the race he was really,
really fast. Toward the very end we were fast and I was hoping we
could catch up to him. I think the only chance we would have had was
off of two and it's so slick over there. He ran a great race.”
MICHAEL SPENCER: “The car was just too tight all night. I couldn't
get the rears on the cushion because the front would just start
tossing across.”
Report Courtesy motorsportsforum.com
|
