Fairgrounds Raceway
Santa Maria, California

May 3, 1997 - Fairgrounds Raceway
From: Gary Roberts

Fairgrounds Raceway held its fourth meeting this season on Saturday night, in front of a record (for this year) crowd. It looked like the recent advertising, or maybe the warmer weather is at last bringing the crowd out.

Results:
Robbie Sauer       14
Brad Sauer         13
Brian Thompson     13
Marvin Sonnier     10
Bobby Campbell     10
Tim Appel           9
Mark Hitchcock      9
John VanderMuellen  8
Chris Campos        7
Gerry Dutweiler     7
Dave Enloe          5
Jimmy Collins       5
Billy Lyons         4
Paul Baldwin        3
Jason Montgomery    0

A final:
B. Sauer, Thompson, Sonnier, Campbell, R. Sauer
B final: 
Campbell, Appel, VanderMuellen, Duttweiler, Hitchcock
C final:
Duttweiler, Lyons, Enloe, Campos, Collins
D final:
Lyons, Baldwin, Montgomery

Some excellent races, on a superbly prepared track, that held up well, all evening. The bigger crowd provided more atmosphere.

For the second week running, Brad Sauer was not the high points scorer, but did win the main. Brother Robbie, who won the A finals at the first two meetings of the season collided heavily with Marvin Sonnier in the first bend and miraculously neither went down. Robbie pulled out a lap later, with a painful knee, squashed between the two machines cylinder heads.

A fairly spectacular crash took place in the C final, when Gerry Duttweiler and Jimmy Collins went into turn one, using exactly the same peice of track. Jimmy was unable to come back in the restart, because half the spokes from his front wheel were taken out by Gerry's footpeg. Jimmy started racing last October on my old twin cam. He has improved tremendously but his point score doesn't show it, because his competitors have improved too. The standard of racing is getting better each week, due to the high number of races they are getting in. The established competition from Los Angeles and Bakersfield is now having some serious battles with these new local riders.

One regular rider missing this week was Mark Maynard. Mark was doing preparation work on a rocket that was supposed to get launched from a local air force base on Friday, but strong winds delayed it. This is the price one has to pay, for having speedway riders that are also rocket scientists!

Next week the official championship points scoring system will start.

Gary Roberts - gary_rob@ix.netcom.com