Neal Gillentine became the first driver to score a clean sweep of the competition this season at Grundy County Speedway. Gillentine guided his #58 F. I.R. A. Mini-Indy racer to fast time at 15.507, and edged out Vern Brown in the trophy dash, heat race and feature event. This was the fourth race of 2007 for the F. I.R. A. group and the fourth different feature winner. Gillentine may have swept, but it wasn’t easy and the racing was great.
The Mini-Mods made their first appearance at Grundy County Speedway in their club’s history. Jesse Johnson would set the official track record for the club at 18.090. Jerry Giuliano won the four lap trophy dash, Bill Trusky took the 10 lap heat race, and Nick Petska was the feature race winner. The club has just changed their web address, but are having a little trouble with it, so until that is strightened out, the Illini Racing Series will hold off on publishing the website’s address. What we can tell you is, these folks come to race!
The Rascal Outlaws put on another great race night after getting off to a rocky start. Jeff LeSage layed his car over in hot laps, bringing out a red flag. First on the scene was the car #8, driven by Jeff’s brother John, a paramedic. Jeff was OK, his car was not. Mark Finley set fast time at 15.528. Rick Corso won both the trophy dash and heat race, but had to settle for second behind John LeSage in the main.
Joe Knippel came into the night tied for the points lead in the Illini Midgets. He set fast time at 16.073, finished 2nd in the trophy dash behind Sean Murphy (in Joe’s back-up car #33X). and won his heat race (heat two was won by Basil Hicks). But his luck ran out on lap three of the feature when he caught the rear wheel of Colorado’s Dave Deheve’s car as he was slowing to enter the pits. As the lead pack came up on him, Joe was working his way up from his outside 4th row starting position, and using his usual high groove. As Deveve slowed, each of the cars in front of Knippel swerved, each with less room for error. Running at full speed, in the range of 100 mph, the time and distance between the nearly stopped Deheve and the all out Knippel could have spelled disaster. Knippel grabbed as much brake as he could, but still made hard enough contact to send him airborn. Neither driver was injured, but neither car was able to continue either.
The feature also saw contact between race leader Doug Orseske and Lamont Critchett. Critchett tried to get under Orseske in turn three, but ran out of race track when Orseske didn’t see him on the inside. Orseske looped the #0 a couple of times before impacting the wall, ending his night. Critchett would have to restart the race at the rear of the pack, and managed to make a last lap pass of Mike Smith to finish second behind race winner Sean Murphy.
| 
|