Twin Cities Raceway Park Review May 19, 2007 Independent Racing Series By Kyle Jones
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On Saturday May 19th, I added a new track on my ever growing list as I made my way to the Twin Cities Raceway Park near North Vernon Indiana. On tap was the Independent Racing Series paying $5,000 to the winner. Good friends Jeremy Morrison and Chip Redmond also made the trip with me.
We arrived at Twin Cities very early on Saturday afternoon as the haul from Union County the night before was not more than an hour or two. My first impression of Twin Cities was very good. It's a nice clean facility and the people were very nice. We set up camp and watched as the haulers made there way to the pit area.
I was kind of disappointed in the car count for the evening as only 27 Super Late Models made their way to Twin Cities. I thought the car count would have been higher since the Brownstown Speedway, which is just down the road, was closed for the night. There were however some good quality cars including the E1 of Mike Balzano, 75 Bart Hartman, WON11 Rob Blair, 12 Rick Aukland, 29 Darrell Lanigan and many more.
The #89 of Indiana's Steve Barnett set fast time by turning a lap of 13.66. Barnett would also take heat race #1 with Kentucky's Darrell Lanigan and Pennsylvania's Dave Hess taking heats two and three. Ohio's Bart Hartman won the B-main after having a flat tire in his heat race and Rick Aukland won the Dash. Rick gets around Twin Cities just as good as anyone and was going for two feature wins in a row after winning the Battle of the Bluegrass feature back in the month of April.
Zanesville Ohio's Rick Aukland and Titusville Pennsylvania's Rob Blair brought the 24 car field down to the green flag and Aukland wasted no time grabbing the early lead. Rick was poised to run away from the entire field and that's what he did leaving all of the close racing far behind him. Fellow Zanesville Ohio native Bart Hartman was the man on the move as he gained 10 spots in the early going to place him 9th at the first caution. When racing resumed, so did Bart's march to the front. By the halfway point, Bart put himself into the 4th position but appeared to have used up his tires as he kept trying to cool them down during yellow flags. Race leader Rick Aukland was on cruise control until lap 42 when he unexpectedly broke and pulled into the infield. Rob Blair inherited the lead from Aukland and with five laps to go; Darrell Lanigan had enough of the bottom groove and decided to step upstairs to make a pass on Blair. Blair however was able to hold off the challenges from Lanigan, Duane Chamberlain and Hartman and take his first $5,000 IRS win. Darrell Lanigan was 2nd followed by Duane Chamberlain, Bart Hartman, Steve Barnett, Wayne Chinn, Mike Balzano, Graham, Doug Ault and Mike Jewell.
Hats off to the 75 of Bart Hartman! Bart had trouble in his heat race but fought back to win the B-main and get a 19th starting spot for the feature. It only took Bart 25 laps to make his way into the top 5. I think Bart used up his stuff trying to race his way to the front and although no one was as fast as Rick Aukland, I think Bart had the second best car.
Once again the Independent Racing Series put on another great show and I got to put a new track in the books. It was very cool to see some of the local boys make the trip. "Flyin" Ryan Markham, Rick Bond, Robbie Scott and Cody Parker were all on hand and they all made the feature. I'm proud of those guys. The Twin Cities Raceway Park was great and I can't wait to make a return trip. I do want to add that JT33 and I killed about 6 Twin-Cities cheeseburgers, they were delicious.
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