I don't remember any Midget Nationals, or ANY event for that matter, with the amount of rumor, speculation, griping, and finger pointing as there was this year. Car counts have been dropping steadily in recent years, and the trend looked like it would continue this time around. In addition to the usual factors like the economy and fear for their equipment (as in MOTORS), having to compete with the 360 Nationals AND USAC sprints shows both Friday and Saturday nights made the prospects look pretty bleak. Trying to get a handle on what (and who) to expect, I'd asked around at the races at Beloit and McCool....I only came up with 10 who said they would be at Belleville. Adding others who'd told me they were going but not at either of those shows, I was having trouble coming up with more than 15 or 16. At the time, it still looked like the Wilke-Pak car wasn't coming either, so news on Midget Madness that they and Lewis were coming was a big relief.
When I saw only 14 cars in the pits, I have to admit I was disappointed, but not terribly so because you don't need a lot of cars to have good racing when there are teams and drivers of the caliber that were here. Actually, very many more cars could easily have hurt the show. Many more than 14 cars on that little track could easily have resulted in a lot of torn up equipment.
During hot laps, the cars showed that, in spite of the heat, the track was very tacky. Several cars, but Zach Daum and CJ Johnson especially, were doing big wheel stands almost every time by. I got so caught up following Zach that I almost missed Terry Goodwin's flip. I had been really looking forward to watching these guys on the small track, because you can literally get within spittin' distance and it's flat enough for them to really back the cars into the turns. These huge wheelies were just icing on the cake for me.
I won't bother you with anything about the feature when you can go to Midget Madness and read a full report by Brian Gapinsky.
http://www.midgetmadness.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=23264
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| Jerry Coons Jr came to Belleville looking to become the first three time winner of the Midget Nationals. |
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| Darren Hagen |
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| Casey Shuman made his first appearance at Belleville. |
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| Terry Goodwin |
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| One of the few shots I got of Patrick Stasa. |
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| I got several sequences like this one. |
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| This fun to watch from trackside. |
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| Patrick's engine was running really rough here and was history soon after this. |
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| This would make a good ad for one of the tear-off companies. The next lap, I was so engrossed following Zach that I almost missed this............... |
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| I saw something out of the corner of my eye and swung around in time to catch Terry Goodwin starting to go over. The focus didn't have time to catch up yet here. |
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| I don't think it hurt anything; he was back for qualifying. |
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| Rico Abreu |
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| Chett Gehrke |
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| Randy Boyer & Brad Kuhn |
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| CJ Johnson also put on quite a show. |
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| Belleville native Randy Boyer. |
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| Vance Lein. |
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| Chris Windom |
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| Jeff Stasa |
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| Brad Kuhn |
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| 3 1/2 wide....on the little track! |
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| Daum had spun & almost come to a stop when CJ came around the corner and bumped Zach hard enough to get him going again. |
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| This is really dark, but I liked the moon up in the corner. This is at the start of the A. |
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| Jeff got lucky here when nobody tagged him. The corners are so much lower that the infield that a stalled car is very hard to spot from the back straight. |
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| Next to the drivers, I had the best seat in the house! |
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| CJ & Rico battled like this quite a while. |
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| This and the next one aren't cropped a bit and I only had the lens at 70 mm. They were going right by the pole I was behind. |
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| Jerry coming out of 4 to take the checkers. |
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| One down, two to go. |
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| Jerry with Witney Sorell |
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