Fast Fridays Speedway
Gold Country Fairgrounds
Auburn, California

North vs. South Civil War Challenge
July 16, 2004 - Fast Fridays, Auburn
By Gary Roberts

The annual Civil War, the North verses South took place on a very good race track which held up all night. There were a lot of good races, the North team won, and despite the final team score, the most valiant efforts were displayed by South rider Scott Brant with hot or cold Chris Manchester winning some, failing to score completely in others. For the North, the most consistent pairing was Northern California season points leaders, Bart Bast and Bobby Hedden..

Unofficial results:.

NORTH 60
Bart Bast          2 3 3 3  11
Bobby Hedden       1 2 2 2   7
Mike Faria         0 2 3 2   7
Bryan Yarrow       2 3 1 3   9
Tommy Hedden       0 2 3 1   6
Bob Hicks          1 0 2 0   3
Chad Felicio       2 3 2 2   9
Chris Kerr         3 1 1 0   5
TJ Fowler (res)    3         3

SOUTH  36
Chris Manchester   3 0 - 3 0 6
Randy DiFrancesco  0 2 2 2   6
Scott Brant        3 3 1 3  10
Jim Estes          1 1 0 1   3
Charlie Venegas    2 0 0 -   2
Bobby Schwartz     0 1 3 1   5
Shawn Harmatiuk    1 1 1 0   3
George Fox         0 0 F 0   0
Dario Galvin (res) 0 1       1

The above regular heats brought the score to 60 to 36.

This was followed by two races, a final and a grand final, with nominated riders and scores of 4, 3, 2, 1, and 5, 4, 3, 2 respectively. These scores are not listed in the individual rider scores above.

Final:
1. Charlie Venegas 2. Bryan Yarrow 3. Chad Felicio 4. Randi DiFrancesco

Grand Final:
1. Chris Manchester 2. Scott Brant 3. Bart Bast 4. Bobby Hedden.

Chris got the gate followed by the 2 Northern riders, but Scott Brant picked his way through to take second.

Scott Brant and Shawn Harmatiuk have raced at Auburn pretty much every week this season.
Randy DiFrancesco, Chris Manchester, Jim Estes and Charlie Venegas have been frequent visitors this season.
Bobby Schwartz has ridden at Auburn many times over the past 25 years.
George Fox had never seen the track before.

Interleaved between each set of races was a Youth North versus South event. A six rider team plus a reserve came up from the South to challenge the top Northern California youths.

Unofficial results:

NORTH Youths 39
Paul Johnson 2 3 3 1 9
Bryce Stark F F 1 2 3
Jay Ricketts 3 3 2 0 8
Tom Fehrman 1 2 1 3 7
Ricky Felicio 2 1 2 2 7
Mitchell Johnson 1 2 1 1 5
Dillon Petersen DNR

SOUTH Youths 33
Krystal Cramer 3 3 3 2 11
Tamara Kripps F 0 0 1 1
Jason Ramirez 2 2 3 3 10
Ricky Valdez 0 1 0 F 1
Miles Calvin 3 0 2 3 8
Nathan Galvin T F F - 0
Joey Holt 1 0 1 0 0 2

The final score was 39 to the North and 33 to the South. Krystal Cramer was unbeaten by a Northern rider and was well supported by Miles Calvin and Jason Ramirez. It was unfortunate that the timing of the North vs. South conflicted with the Youth World Championship for 80cc machines, in Sweden. Currently the South's Ricky Wells is competing and his presence here would certainly have affected the score.

Gary Roberts - gary_rob@ix.netcom.com