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17 winged 360's tonight along with 24 specs. Alissa Geving in the #3x was crowned 2011 track champion. This was Geving's 3rd Petaluma championship. She has to be most accomplished lady s/c driver on the west coast and IMO the USA. 2 visitors from Ocean Speedway/Watsonville tonight - the #98 of Ryan Rusconi and the #20x of Tommy Laliberte. I believe Laliberte was driving the Werbach Motorsports car fromerly driven by Bud Kaeding and Mike Henry among others. The #49 of Mike Monahan made the long tow down the hill from Reno.
The #57 of Billy Butler led all qualifiers with a 12.804 on a tacky surface that only went faster as the night progressed. 2 heats were run, inverting 6. Geving wired the field in the 2nd heat from her front row start to win going away. Her fastest lap time of 12.721 during the heat would have led all qualifiers an hour earlier. The #98 of Rusconi won the 2nd heat over Laliberte for a 1-2 Ocean finish.
A-Main started 16 cars as the #24b of Brett Lay did not make the call. The pill draw was a 6 with Laliberte and the #17w of Cole Wood the front row starters. Laliberte led the entire race with Wood chasing him to the checkers. This was the Colorado transplant Wood's best run of the year as they hit the set up for the Petaluma gumbo.(Wood is one of few Ford power plants in the 360 ranks).Any mistake by Laliberte could have cost him the win. Hard charger was easily the #26 of Billy Aton as a poor qualifying effort and not finishing in the top 5 in his heat put Aton as the final starter in the feature. Aton would charge from 16th all the way up to finish 5th. A couple of early yellows on lap 4 and lap 5 knocked out 4 cars as 12 cars finished the A. Due to the tracky tack lapped traffic was never a factor in the race. Too bad as it could have been interesting to see the leaders trying to pass backmarkers.
The 24 specs were led in qualifyng the #8g of Dan Gonderman with a time of 14.893. 3 heats were run for the specs. Heat 1 was captured by the #98 of Bob Newberry. Heat 2 was won by #17 of Colton Slack in his 1st Petaluma race and heat 3 went to the #11 of Matt Haulot. 20 cars made the call for an entertaining A-Main. The #1 of Tery Schank was 1st across the line winning by 8 car lengths over the #17 of Slack, the #6n of Gary Nelson, Jr, #96 of Arvo Backholm, and the #2n of Shannon Newton. The #07n of Zack Lynskey made a spirited charge to the top 5 from 14th starting only to see his bid for 5th end with a turn 3 spin on the final dash to the checkered flag. Lynskey would keep it running but finish outside the top 10. It was great to see the #77 of Chris Magoon back racing in a sprint again.
This is the final 360 winged race for the year. There is no end of season open 360 winged s/c show again this year or non wing 360 open show, Not sure why as past open shows for both classes were well attended with 25-30+ cars and always a good crowd. What a shame. 2 more spec sprint races are on the schedule. 9/17 with the Maselli late model open and another better paying show (not sure of the date- see www.petaluma-speedway.com for schedule.
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