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BUD KAEDING EARNS TULARE PACIFIC COAST NATIONALS USAC SPRINT VICTORY, BROTHER TO HOSPITAL
–By Tim Kennedy
TULARE, Calif., Nov. 13 – Bud Kaeding started fourth and won the 30-lap USAC AMS/OIL National/CRA regional sprint car feature Saturday in his own BK Motor-sports Maxim/Chevy. He pocketed $5,000 from the $23,700 sprint car portion of the USAC sprint/midget purse posted by Steve Faria's Groppetti Automotive Thunderbowl Raceway. The race concluded the second portion of the 31st running of the Pacific Coast Nationals that dates back to 1962 at Ascot Park in Gardena. About 3,000 spectators and a crowded pit area witnessed the second complete USAC program on a chilly, low 50-degree evening after Tracy Hines had won the 30-lap midget feature. (See separate midget story.)
Runner-up Levi Jones, driving the STP Chevy owned by NASCAR driver Tony Stewart, battled Kaeding closely after he took second position from pole starter Austin Williams on a lap 21green flag. Jones trailed Kaeding by one length as late as lap 25 before he fell back in the closing laps to a 20-yard deficit at the checkers. The event was the final 2010 UASAC National Sprint race. Jones, who earned $2,500, secured his fourth career and second consecutive USAC National Sprint Series championship, tying Steve Butler (1986-88, 1990).
Wild on-track action on the tacky, third-mile clay clay track resulted in seven flips plus a single-car crash that sent two drivers to the hospital for precautionary medical evaluations. Tim Kaeding, a frequent winged sprint car feature winner at the Tulare Fairgrounds, took the scariest ride of the night. The elder Kaeding brother and son of many-time California sprint car champion Brent Kaeding, started 18th in the 24-car. He had entered the top ten on lap 21 when it appeared another car pinched him into the outside wall between the starting line and the first turn. His No. 83 Dennis Roth Maxim launched into a series of of four to six high flips at the outside wall and cartwheeled to the inside of the front straight as it shed bodywork. The car stopped overturned near the entrance to the first turn low groove. Oncoming cars in the still 19-car field avoided contact with his car. The shaken driver walked from the car when rescuers carefully righted it. Later he was examined in the track ambulance in the pits before it took him to a hospital for a more thorough medical evaluation.
The red flag remained in effect from 10:54 to 11:07 pm. Remaining cars took the green flag and two laps later Nic Faas, running 15th, backed the No. 7 Priestley Chevy tail first , hard into the third turn crash-wall. He exited the car, but track safety staff called for the other track ambulance after Faas sat on the ground in discomfort with suspected back pain. A Tulare County Fire Department paramedic ambulance arrived at the track and Faas also went to a local hospital for medical tests and evaluation. That red flag lasted 11-minutes. The final seven laps ran off quickly without incident with the checkered flag falling at 11:23 pm.
Eighth starter Tracy Hines earned $1,250 for third place. Justin Grant (from 5th), Matt Mitchell (from 14th), Casey Shuman (from 10th), USAC/CRA point leader Mike Spencer (from 9th), last Saturday's Perris Oval Nationals $12,500 winner Chris Windom, Austin Williams and Jerry Coons, Jr (from 11th) rounded out the top ten. Williams, 20-year old pole starter, ran second to the lap 21 red flag. His John Jory No. 2 Viper faded to sixth by lap 27 against more experienced drivers.
Bryan Clauson, from outside row one, shot into an early lead and led the first seven laps as sixth starter Damion Gardner quickly advanced to second position. Gardner made an inside move leaving the fourth turn on lap 6 and passed Bud Kaeding for second place. On lap 8 fastest mover Gardner shot under Clauson for the lead and their cars made contact. The impact sent both cars flipping several times together to the fourth turn crash-wall. Neither driver was injured, but both cars were eliminated. Two laps later ninth-running Danny Sheridan flipped high in the air against the first turn wall and landed abruptly in an upright position without injury. The seven sprint car flips started during qualifying when Jonathan Logan, of Hanford, flipped his 360 cu. in. Chevy in the first turn. Wes Gutierrez bicycled and flipped in turn one during the fourth heat. Geoff Ensign, from Sebastapol, also flipped in the first turn during the semi-main. All three preliminary event flippers escaped injury in their single car incidents.
Four eight-car, eight-lap heat races inverted the first three rows and sent the first four finishers directly to the main event. Sheridan, Faas, T. Kaeding and Jones won the heats. Hines won the 12-lap semi-main over fellow Hoosier Jon Stanbrough in a duel of front row starters. Stanbrough, in his season-long Fox No. 53 ride, was the 24th qualifier and he set the fastest qualifying time of 14.853, short of the USAC Sprint one-lap track record of 14.646 set 52-weeks earlier by Clauson. Stanbrough, the national leading non-wing sprint car feature winner with 21 victories this season, started seventh in the main, but he dropped out on lap 3 with a flat tire. Stanbrough won the 2009 two-day PCN USAC Sprint Saturday 40-lap feature driving the No. 37 Indiana Underground Construction car that Casey Riggs drives this season.
The PCN event was revived last year at Tulare after last running of the event in 1995 in Hanford. Twenty-three drivers have won the now 31 PCN features. Past winners have been Jim Wood in 1962, Jim Cox, Marshall Sargent, Dick Fries, Bobby Adamson, Bob Hogle, Gene Brown, Rick Ferkel, Clark Templeman, Jr, Ron Shuman (3 times), Buster Venard, Dean Thompson (4 times), Sammy Swindell, Bubby Jones (2 times), Brad Doty, Steve Kinser (2 times), Brad Noffsinger, Rip Williams (2 times), Lealand McSpadden and Mike Kirby in1995. Stanbrough and Bud Kaeding at Tulare now have added their names to the illustrious list of PCN winners.
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