ron.brown11

Kaden passed for the lead on lap 1 at Orange County Speedway in NC. He lost the lead on a restart late in the race for a lap. He spanked the field tonight, in the Pro Late Model 100 lapper, leading 99 laps. I hope he can double up later tonight in the Late Model Stock race. What a drive for that young man!!

On 4/9/2024 at 5:22 PM, ron.brown11 said:

Bob Labonte passed away this week. There weren't any funeral details listed in the story. He did a lot to put Texas asphalt racing on the national map. I'm sure that Nick Holt can add much more on that, as I was just coming to TX as Terry was moving to Cup. RIP sir..

All of Mr. Labonte's funeral services have been posted, and will take place in High Point, NC on Fri & Sat.

On 4/10/2024 at 3:48 PM, HiTech said:

 dont die to soon ron .. .  in those days at cc   it was a tough bunch i saw some nasty take outs  on the track  in the pits tire iron jacks and what ever .. but over all  fun .. WHAT WAS IT BOB SAID TO RICK / did i ever thank u  rick for all of this .i bet rick was honored ..sorta funny how they became such good friends . sorta like  i didnt like nick  at first till  later  on ..not a surprise for nick i know .. i have alot of respect  for nick now . we have had some  good talks . you find folks are not what  u think they are   on social media ..

Mike, I'm not planning on checking out any time soon, of course my wife might have something to say about that lol.. But hey, I'm 67, and have had 25 surgeries between March 2008 and Jan 2021. Both my parents died at age 71, so maybe my time is getting close too.

I always used to think that all of the fighting, and shit like that was because everyone was so competitive. I've come to believe that almost all of it was simply hard headedness. Once we get past that, it's funny how much we have in common. Then comes respect for each other, then friendship. I sure wish I'd been smart enough to realize that a bit sooner.

I haven't known Nick anywhere near as long as you have Mike, but I've always respected him. He always played things straight, and by the book. When I was helping Greg Baber with his modified, he hired Nick for his expertise on chassis setup. I'd like to think that I learned a lot from him, but he didn't have a great student. Geometry was never my best course in school. But he still took his time explaining why he wanted adjustments etc, and never got frustrated. I also took his classes, and he showed patience there too. Again, I really respect that. 

5 hours ago, NickHolt said:

I was hoping Mike would chip in here, and he did. 

I never met Bob.  Back in the day, he and Terry were running at Corpus and I was either busy running the Mini Stock at Pan American or crewing on San Antonio cars.  In those days most teams didn't travel much.

And they only ran San Antonio Speedway that 1st year and I was still running at Pan American.

So our paths never crossed. 

But Rick Rapp had a bunch of stories to tell about Bob. Terry and Rick fought for every inch of track when they were both running CC and quite often things got heated in the pits with Bob, more often than not, in the middle of dustup. I will say that Rick respected the Labontes and had no animosity towards Bob once they landed in NASCAR-land. In fact, Rick and Terry ended up being pretty good friends once all was said and done.

Bob was raised in the next town to where I grew up in Maine but was about 10 years older and joined the Navy while I was still in grade school, so our paths didn't cross there either.

Nick, I was sure that you would know more than I do about Bob, and you did. All I ever heard was third party stuff. I too was glad to hear Mike with some personal info. I had always heard the Bob could be a little rough around the edges, but was a good guy. I never went to CC, going to SA on a GI's pay was about all I could afford then, while living in Del Rio. I was glad that he was able to get Terry & Bobby to Cup. I know that have been other Texans to make it, but none had the impact that Terry & Bobby had. I don't think I ever heard Ken Squire say Terry Labonte. It was always "Texas" Terry Labonte. Like you Nick, I was born somewhere else. But TX is my adopted home. God willing, this is where I'll die too.

Bob Labonte passed away this week. There weren't any funeral details listed in the story. He did a lot to put Texas asphalt racing on the national map. I'm sure that Nick Holt can add much more on that, as I was just coming to TX as Terry was moving to Cup. RIP sir..

Kaden started 6th, in Sat's 125 lap race at Caraway Speedway in NC. It was the season opener for the Late Model Stock season, and his first start in the Wood Brother's/David Pearson paint scheme #17 Mustang. He ran as high as third at one point, and got shuffled back to 11th, and then climbed back to 5th at the end. Caraway's grove is on the bottom in the corners, and if you get off the bottom (or get moved off the bottom), you can lose a lot of spots. He was running in 3rd and got moved, and finally got back 5th.

Carson Kvapil won the race, but very early it didn't look like he would. He and Deak, McCaskill (spelling?) got together going into turn 1. Kvapil ran over Deak's left rear tire and went airborne with both right side tires. Luckily it didn't really seem to hurt either car. There was only 1 significant crash near the end. It involved 7 cars, but Andrew Grady really got the worst end of it. He got caught up in a lot of crashes, not of his making last year. Unfortunately this season started the same way. Too bad, as he was running really good too. That car will need at least a new front clip.

Katie Hettinger, last year's runner up for the Pro Late Model championship, made the jump to the top series. She got as high as 7th at one point, and managed a top 15 finish. This years she's driving for her family owned team. That's an outstanding start for her, as there were 30 cars that started the race. She too lost several spots after getting moved. I think that she's got a bright future in racing. 

Kaden raced the CARS Tour Pro Late Model race today at Southern National in NC. He started 3rd and finished 3rd. On lap 3 Kaden drove it off into turn 3, and got under the then leader Tanner Tyler. I don't know if Tanner's spotter was asleep, or Tanner just decided that he was going to turn down and try and close the door. It really hurt Tanner's car the worst, but Kaden had the toe knocked way out for the remaining 97 laps. But he soldiered on for the third place finish. He also mentioned that the car he ran today is a 2015 Hamke chassis. The he went on to say that they have a new car that he'll be driving at Hickory. I'm not sure just how many of the Pro Late Model shows he's running this season. Next weekend the CARS Tour Late Model Stocks will be running at Southern National.I haven't seen the driver entry list for that yet. I'm hoping the Kaden will be there in the #21 car.

On 2/23/2024 at 10:23 AM, NickHolt said:

Ryan was pretty decent at Houston Mortorsports Park a few years back. 

Ryan sure didn't have as good as last year at New Smyrna. Last year he drove a car out of the Jett stable and was stout all week. I'm not sure who he drove for, or if that was a family owned car. He was mostly middle of the park in the races that I saw this year. I didn't see every night this year. I'll go back and try and see the rest.

In his first ride for Niece Motorsports today, Kaden finished 6th. I don't know if this was his first run at Atlanta, but if it was that's a really good start. Great Job!!

9 minutes ago, NickHolt said:

Earlier this month, the remaining 28 acres that was once San Antonio Speedway - the part that the track actually occupied - was sold.  The new owner(s) have not announced their intentions, but from what I can gather, they are looking to put up a large service station like the large stations that are similar to Bucee's.  The other 30-something acres to the north were sold to City Public Service several months ago.

This should pretty much put any rumors of someone restoring the track to rest....

Nick

It was bound to happen, and a bit surprised that it took this long. Did CPS ever build/do anything with the part that they bought? They probably passed on buying the track footprint, because of the costs of remediation. I'm sure that the pit area would be classified as "toxic". My brother retired from General Electric Jet Engines 4 years ago. Right before he retired, GE bought all of the acreage of Tri-County Speedway, located about 10 miles north of the main plant. They turned that property into an office complex, removing most of the office workers away from the engine plant. He said that it cost more for the remediation then what they paid for the land/track. He told me about how many truckloads of contaminated dirt they had to remove, before anything could be built, I just don't remember now. The track was a 1/2 mile high bank track. I'd bet that there was at least 30 acres for parking. Then the original track owner/builder bought another 60 acres, and built a softball complex, that had 8 diamonds, with more parking. It was quite the sports complex. All of that now sits under a GE office complex. 

Ryan Preece finished 2nd on night 4 to Ron Silk, the defending Whelen Tour Champ, and winner of everything this week in a tour type modified. On night 5 Ryan won and Silk finished 2nd. Preece had an awful Whelen points race on Sat, finishing a lap down and barely inside the top 20. He may not be able to run the Wed or Thur show, as he has qualifying on Wed and the Duels on Thurs. He said that he's going to try and make the show on Wed, but Thur is a no go. Too bad, because he's got his family owned car hauling.

Bubba Pollard started 11th, and ran mainly3rd to 8th most of the race. But his car really looked great on long runs. It really looked like Ty Majeski who started 17th, took the lead by about lap 35, and looked untouchable. With about 9 laps to go, something happened, and he started losing positions, finishing 16th. It turns out that he had a drive plate fail, and he lost an axle. I'm shocked he finished at all. I thought he had a tire going down, but the more he ran it looked mechanical. It looked like a shock broke or the panhard bar broke. Casey Roderick was strong all night to finish 3rd. Young Jett Nolan ran the top 10 all race, and fought his way up to 2nd, and that's where he finished. Chase Elliot started 8th I believe, but did finish 6th. But the was mainly because of Majeski falling back and Nason following suit.

A perenial World Series Asphalt race winner, and series champ winner got taken out going into turn 1. It was a really hard hit. The car will need at least a front clip, and possibly an engine too. Derek Griffin is from the Northeast, and is usually very calm. He came unglued on the guy that dumped him. Thankfully no punches were thrown. The Memorial is for super late models, and they put on such a good show at New Smyrna vs the late model stocks cars. There were still 18 cars on the lead lap after 200 laps. Good race to watch!!

5 hours ago, Josh42 said:

Just to answer a couple questions:

The Funny car vs Dragster matchups were set by the cars that did not qualify for the Shootout.  I think they only took the Top 8 in qualifying.  

Austin Prock's Top Fuel car was already parked for the season as it did not have the funding. But if I'm not mistaken the cool thing is the Crew Chief is his dad and the Car Chief or Head Tuner is his Brother.

They have lowered nitro percentages, took timing, they have done downforce, blower overdrive, rev limiters and these teams still figure out how to go faster with all of it. This is when I wish dad was still around because he had alot of inside information on this issue directly. He had a lot of conversations with a bunch of the top teams crew chiefs and head tuners about this exact subject. He would discuss the track prep with them very thoroughly to understand what he was doing to the track that would help them achieve numbers they were wanting to get.

Thanks for the info Josh. Like I said, I just don't follow the NHRA as much as I used to. I wasn't at home to watch the Thur & Fri practice & qualifying so I wasn't aware of how they had done the F/C & T/F match ups. I think that I heard that who ever won that race got $10k, but that's just what I think I heard. I was just jumping back & forth with the Ice Breaker @ Florence and the NHRA. Then it was onto the races @ New Smyrna. I have been to the Bradenton strip, but that was way too many moons ago. From what they showed on Flo, and what my brother said from there, they sure have upgraded that facility!! I watched a Pro Mod weekend program online a couple years ago. It sure didn't look like this weekend. I'm happy for them, but even more happy for the teams & fans that will get to enjoy these upgrades.

9 minutes ago, TBone said:

Were the nitro cars running 1000' or the full quarter mile?

They're running the 1000' track. I'm not sure that they will ever go back to the full1/4 mile track with the nitro cars. Jack Beckman is certain that the NHRA will do something to keep the nitro cars to somewhere around the 335mph mark. Both of those nitro series cars are already pretty unstable at 335. Beckman was still stunned 24 hours after Tasca's run. He said that he studied the computer printout from timing, checked the track's weather data, and went back and watched the video several times. He was certain that is wasn't a valid mph. Like having a big tail wind, or something else that might have helped push up the speed for Tasca. Beckman should know, he got the nickname Fast Jack for a reason. 

TBone, I don't know when/if you started following Cup racing, but in 1988 Bobby Allison nearly parked his 3500lb car into the main grandstands at Talladega. That was on top of numerous bad crashes at both Daytona & Talladega. If that would have happened, I don't think that NASCAR would exist today. They said that the restrictor plates were only a temp fix, until they could figure out a way to slow down the cars. Every Cup race since at the super speedways have sported the restrictor plate. 

The need to slow down the nitro cars isn't something new. They have decreased the percentage of nitro allowed into the fuel mix at least 2 times before. They used to be able to run 100% nitro, but thanks to Kenny Bernstien's huge numbers that he was attaining, along with several big nitro crashes (several different drivers), they started cutting the percentage of nitro allowed. A few years later speeds where starting to get some pretty bigs gains, so they lowered the limit again. I know of them doing that twice, but there could be more. I don't follow the NHRA as much as I used to. 

The Pro Superstar Shootout just finished at Bradenton Motorsports Park in FL. All of the NHRA's biggest stars raced in 4 divisions, Top Fuel; Funny Cars: Pro Stocks; and a 4th class that pitted funny cars against a top fuel dragsters (the funny cars got a .2 starting line advantage). I didn't catch how they arrived at which cars would compete in that division, but it sure was fun. Chad Green in his Mustang funny car beat Texan Steve Torrence in his top fuel dragster in that final. I didn't hear what Green won for this class. In his winning interview he said that he couldn't believe that he was able to beat Torrence not once, but twice this weekend.

Texan Erica Enders, the reigning Pro Stock World Champion won the pro stock final, winning a $125,000 in doing so.

In what might be considered a surprise & upset, Austin Prock won the funny car final. Prock normally races a top fuel car, and the car he drove is normally driven by Robert Hight. It was announced about 3 weeks ago that Robert has some medical issues, and Prock was announced as his replacement driver. As both Hight & Prock drive for John Force, the decision was made to park the top fuel car, and just concentrate on the funny car. That seems to have worked out pretty good so far. His check for winning was $250,000. Nice payday!

In top fuel, reigning champ Doug Kalitta won. The perennial top fuel driver finally won his first top fuel championship in Nov. What a way to show that his winning the championship wasn't a fluke. He too collected $250,000.

But here's the most shocking bit of news from this weekend. There was a world record for the top speed ever in a nitro burning car. One car ran a 341.68 mph run, the fastest run ever by an NHRA legal car, and it wasn't a top fuel dragster either. Bob Tasca ran that ET in his Mustang Funny Car!! Fast Jack Beckman, a many time funny car winning driver was on the announce team for this weekend. He so didn't believe the mph, he left the booth and went to the timing tower to verify, and it wasn't a lie. He was stunned to nearly being speechless. And if you ever heard any of his interviews after a f/c win, you'd know that's something, Think of a John Force interview when he's being interviewed about anything. 

My brother & sister in law, who still lives in Cincinnati, left Wed, heading to Sarasota, FL to get out of the cold for a couple of weeks.I told him about it. He didn't know that this race weekend was happening this week. They decided to stop by Bradenton, as it's only about 15 miles from Sarasota. As they were walking up to the ticket booth, they heard a couple of nitro cars, but couldn't see what was happening. He heard them staging (whoever "they" were), and whipped out his phone, aiming toward the track. He never saw any cars, but he did get the audio of the run, but the video was just blurred chainlink fencing, but he sent it to me anyway. Then he heard the track announcers going crazy over the top speed that was just attained. That was Tasca's record run. He thought they were T/F cars. Beckman made a few comments tonight about that run. He said the he expects that the NHRA will make some rules "adjustments" to the nitro cars before the season opener, to slow them down. Sounds like NASCAR eh?? He was saying that the NHRA views 240mph kind of like NASCAR views the 200mph speeds at Daytona & Talladega, a dangerous speed there. These races at Bradenton is not an NHRA event. This was the show that Tony Stewart and others put together, kind of like an All Star race, or the SRX races that he and Ray Evernham have put on for the last 3 years. 

Carson Kvapil (driving for Jr Motorsports) wins the Ice Breaker 125 at Florence. Connor Hall was 2nd, Cody Kelley 3rd, Earnhardt was 4th, and Sam Yarbrough 5th. Very good clean race, with a couple of spins & 1 car that ran off course in turn 3. Connor Hall drove his first race for the Nelson Motorsports' #22. Cade Brown won November's SC 400 race in a dominating fashion, but 6th was all he could muster today. Still, this was a very good, clean race for all. Great start to the season for these east coast late model stocks drivers. 

As there were no late model stocks running last night at New Smyrna, some of these teams that ran at Florence today, might head south to try their luck there. I hope that the races tonight at New Smyrna will run as clean as today's race.

On 1/12/2024 at 10:03 AM, MikePeters95 said:

Just saw this on Facebook on the CARS tour page.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100071567284009


 

Jody Measamer hasn't forgot how to race either. He just won the truck series race at Florence Speedway's Ice Breaker. I will try to give an update for the main event for the late model stocks later.

21 hours ago, rebelracewriter said:

This one hits hard.....I lost a good friend today....As many have already heard Slider passed away.....I hope it's true that he's now disease and pain free and reunited with his mom, that he dearly loved.....Slider was one of a kind.....I can't think of anyone that loved dirt track racing more than he did.....He always said I had an open invitation to stay the night and his place in Waco or Laguna Park...I spent a few night in the guest room at his mom/step dads place......We'd stay up all night talking racing and bullshitting......I'm glad he and HWJ came to be friends after years of differences.....I hope HOT Spwy. finds a place for him on their wall of fame

RIP Lil Buddy save me a seat at the great dirt track above

I never got to see him race, but had seen his name in results rundowns. My condolences to his family and all of his friends. Now it's time for him to go run in the track up there. God Bless Mr Young!

I just read that Kaden will drive the #45 truck for 12 races this year for Niece. That's a fairly well funded operation. He will be sharing that truck with Ross Chastain (5 races), Connor Mosaic (1 race), and Johnny Sauter will run the rest of the schedule, to include Daytona next week. This is the same team, but in the #41 truck that Bayley Curry will drive for. I think the Al Niece is a Texan, and is loading up on Texas drivers.  Nice!!

On 2/9/2024 at 11:30 AM, 24nomo said:

By the way, they can get rid of the dirt from Bristol, what a gimmick that was, dirt racing at Bristol.   Take that spring race away from Bristol and lets go to the Nashville Fairgrounds.   I hope they finally get approval.  

They did..

Ryan Luza started 7th, and finished 5th in the 35 lap main in the Late model class.Isabella Robustro started in the top 10, and finished 6th. I'm so happy for her for finally getting back on track  after having a brutal cash into the front straight wall last spring while running for the win at Hickory on the last lap.She got a bad concussion therein party much ended her 2023 reason.The hot lady from the Pro late model stocks last year was Kattie Hettinger, she's now driving their family owned team. She started 8th and finished 7th. So she has not yet showed the speed in the first race that they did last year while driving for the 81 team. I expect that both of these ladies will have better shows as the week goes on. Ryan Luza is running the Pro Mod late model. He started 7th, and finished 6th.

Reg Rugerrio won the super late model race. Bubba Polard dropped out with a mechanical issue.

8 hours ago, 24nomo said:

Pro Late Model and Super Late Model racing is booming everywhere.  I sure wish that we could get some of that down here in Texas.   

That's why I'm so hopeful about the CARS Tour & the SRL Series. I don't know if at some point they merge, but so far I don't see them trying to box out the other with rules variations. That there is what has caused a lot of the decline in asphalt late/super late model racing. Purses hurt too, but the lack of rules that will allow a team to run both series' has really hurt. This is where the dirt scene has absolutely killed it. Yes, purses really help too, but the ability for a team to pick & choose when/where they want to race is huge. Like minded rules really helps that. As I said here before, what the new CARS Tour ownership brings to the table is huge for asphalt racing. Also, with Harvick's interest in Kern Co shows that he isn't forgetting where he got his start, and earned his way to the top of the racing food chain. His home track was Mesa Marin. That was bulldozed over, and Kern Co was built a few years ago. I doubt that there is a better Sat night asphalt track in this country. It's really special.

I will always have mixed emotions, when talking about how Harvick made it NASCAR's top 3 divisions. There's no doubt that he has the skills, as his selection to the HOF in a few years is certain. But if Chris Trickle doesn't get murdered in Las Vegas, would Kevin get the Spears ride that had already taken Ron Hornaday Jr to NASCAR's top 3 divisions? When Chris ran his last race in Tucson in the Winter Heat Series, there were already talk among those "in the know" around that series, that Chris was probably heading to the Charlotte area soon. He was good, Spears Manufacturing loved him, and so did fans. One of the people that was talking about his future was Lee Baumgarten, the track president of TRP. When NASCAR sold the lease at TRP, Lee became the track president at Phoenix International. David Hoots, who ran everything Winter Heat at TRP said the same thing. There were about a half dozen drivers that made it to Charlotte because of those Winter Heat seasons. The one I spoke most often to was Ron Hornaday. He kept his southwest tour, Winston West, and super late model cars at Carlos Serrano's shop for all of his races during the seasons he raced in them. Carlos would do some set up & crash repair for me on my mod. Carlos' shop was 2 blocks from my business office. Don't tell my wife, but there were many a day that I would tell her that I needed to go inspect a business to insure, just to go to his shop and hang out for a while. Especially if it was Winter Heat time. I got to meet some pretty cool racers, and a couple of inventors. You might not have heard of Dan Press, but he was a pretty good driver in his day. He also invented the gold track rear end center section. I didn't really understand them, but Carlos talked me into getting one. Yeah, it was a bit expensive, but boy was it worth it!

On 1/12/2024 at 10:03 AM, MikePeters95 said:

Just saw this on Facebook on the CARS tour page.

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100071567284009


 

On page 60 of the Feb issue of Speedway Illustrated, Kaden was mentioned in an article that they did on the CARS Tour. It's in the 2 page picture caption. It doesn't look like Kaden will run all of the CARS Tour races, and that's a bummer. This isn't a R&S house car, at least according to R&S's site team/crew chief listing. I hope that he gets most of the races this season. Mr Usry has had competitive cars in the past, and Jody was a good driver in his day. I have no idea how strong the Wynn financial backing is, but it's probably stronger than what ButlerBuilt was. And they weren't on the car all the time. So I'm very hopeful for Kaden's season in the CARS Tour.

LOL I get it! I don't think that it's too far down the road before NASCAR's top 3 will be some sort of pay to watch (I don't see me paying to watch them). I've really enjoyed what FloRacing offers, and that's the only subscription service I plan on using. I'm definitely not going to be paying for several different service providers, so unless Flo starts dropping a bunch of tracks/series', that will continue to be the service that I'm willing to pay for. I've been impressed with them for 2 reasons. The first is the shear volume of racing that they show, from literally all over the country. Hey, snow sled racing is all over their schedule right now. I'm not watching it, but it's there. The second reason is that 4 years ago, pretty much the only racing they covered was dirt racing. I've been impressed at how quickly that they've added the equipment and broadcast teams to host all of the racing. Now some tracks are still in the process of adding more cameras, so they are stuck trying to show the races with just 1 camera. But those are a bit rare, as most have at least 2 cameras. 

As I get nearly all of my racing fix on tv or online now, there still is no comparison to being there. I was visiting friends in Tucson a week ago.  Tucson Speedway was hosting their annual Chilly Willy super late model weekend. That was my home track when I raced my modified. I had actually forgot it was the same weekend that we were going to be there. So I can tell you I was absolutely bummed that I couldn't go due to commitments that I had already made. But hey, at least I could watch it online when we got home. But yes, I really wished I could have been there. Besides not being there in person, they only had 2 cameras. One was a fixed wide pan of the track, while the other was a manned camera. So you only got to see what they wanted you to see, and rarely caught the action throughout the field. Hopefully they will get more cameras in the future. 

That's great news!! It will be very interesting to see what he can do with some stability for a change. He sure looked good driving an R&S race car at Florence a couple of months ago. I wonder if the 2024 paint scheme will continue to look like an old Wood Brothers car. I always loved that Purolater scheme. A guy named Woody Howard runs a scheme like that at Langley, only his number is 41.