Kruseman Halts Spencer's Streak At Perris

It was a new track in a new state for me as Morgan and I rolled into the Perris Auto Speedway on the Southern California Fairgrounds Saturday night for the Amsoil USAC CRA Sprint Cars. This half-mile clay oval is a first class facility in beautiful setting and on this night the racing surface stayed racy all night even though a strong field of thirty-six non-wing sprint cars put it to the test on a hot and breezy evening.

Mike Spencer has won seven of the thirteen series events thus far in 2012 including five straight wins here at PAS and he started out the night by setting quick time and then winning his heat race. This would put him on the fourth row for the 30-lap main event and Spencer gradually started his move to the front at the drop of the green. Corey Kruseman would take off from the front row and open up big lead while the battle behind him kept us very entertained. David Cardey, Ryan Bernal, Ronnie Gardner and Spencer were swapping lines and tossing sliders at each other and after the mid-point of the event Brody Roa joined the battle after starting from deep in the pack.

Kruseman looked like he had this one in the bag, but with six laps remaining he entered turn one too high and caught the wall with his right rear. The veteran driver somehow made the save and continued on, but his lead was now just a few car lengths over Spencer with lap traffic just ahead. He may have caught a break though two laps later when Cody Williams spun in turn two pulling the first caution of the race. As the field readied for a restart, the red flag was displayed instead as Austin Williams hopped the cushion in turn two while goosing his car, caught the wall and turned upside down.With no traffic now in front of him Kruseman was smooth over the final four laps and was able to halt Mike Spencer's Perris win streak at five by picking up the $2,500 victory.

Bobby Michnowicz topped a nineteen-car field for the California Lightning Sprint victory and "Hubcap Mike" Collins won an entertaining Senior Sprint feature. The Lightning Sprints are the same as the winged Micro or Mini-Sprints that we have in the Midwest while the Senior sprints have drivers who must be over forty-five years of age and they run 360 c.i. steel block engines.

Morgan will be starting his two year graduate school program at Chapman University here in southern California on Monday and while I figured we wouldn't see him back in Iowa until Christmas, that was pretty much confirmed when track promoter Don Kazarian and event promoter J.C. Agajanian Jr. announced tonight that the Turkey Night Grand Prix for the USAC Midgets will be held here at Perris Auto Speedway on Thursday November 22nd. The event has been held on the asphalt at the Irwindale Speedway since 1999, but with that facility in bankruptcy the Agajanian's decided to return the event to dirt at Perris where Billy Boat won it back in 1996. It is a pretty good bet that Morgan will be celebrating his Thanksgiving night in style by watching the USAC Midgets here at Perris!