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Mother Nature Cooperates With Badger’s First Points Race
By Mike “Speed” Weaver
April 13, 2003, Dousman WI
Mother Nature cooperated nicely and the Badger Kart Club was able to start of the Bridgestone Tire BKC Championship Points series with great weather. Temperatures in the mid-sixties greeted karters for both Saturday’s practice day as well as Sunday’s race.
Being the first race of the year, things didn’t go as smoothly as usual. Computer problems plagued the first round of heats, but was quickly resolved. Next, the race day was slowed down by three red flag incidents. Fortunately, none of the drivers involved were hurt beyond a few bumps and bruises.
Last year’s Sr. Sportsman Heavy champion Steve Mente started off the 2003 season right by taking both heat wins and completely dominating the feature event. Mike Landeck also dominated in Briggs Heavy winning both the 2nd heat and the feature. Matt Cota did the same in Yamaha Lite by dominating all the heat races and winning the feature by quite a bit. Last year’s HPV Heavy champ Matt Mercier showed his winning form by crushing the field in 125cc Shifter.
Some of the best racing was put on by the Briggs Jr. Sporstman. Jimmy Cline Jr. was up front all day long with Tommy Andersen and Steven Wirtz pursuing. In the feature, with 3 laps to go, Andersen got into the back of Cline causing the two to be “hooked together” briefly. This was enough to take Andersen out of the race and let Wirtz jump out front. Wirtz went on to win with Cline still managing to hold on to second.
In Jr. SSX Can, Joe Brenner managed to overcome his problems from the first heat and win the second heat and the feature. Mike Fuchs was the “top dog” in Yamaha Heavy winning the feature by quite a distance. Mark Baier was the “kart on the move” in Yamaha Heavy as he got shuffled to the rear of the field on the start and still managed to finish 4th in a class of 9 competitors.
Jesse Schwabe won the HPV Heavy feature in a class that was plagued with 2 red flags. The first red flag occurred in the first heat when Scott Kalish made contact with the rear tire of Schwabe who had just washed-out coming out of the hairpin turn. Kalish bounced in the air and came down on the rear tire again, launching him up and over Schwabe. The next red flag occurred when a number of karts got together in the first turn during the feature sending karts spinning, crashing and eventually rolling over. As mentioned earlier, none of the drivers were injured seriously and all of them came back to race later that day.
Badger Kart Club will be closed for the weekend of Easter, but will return to action the following Sunday, April 27th. As always, spectators are admitted free of charge with racing starting at approximately noon.
Results
2 Cycle Jr. Sport Briggs Animal Sr.
1 Ryan Schwister 1 David Koeferl
2 TJ Koyen 2 Don Mueller
3 Joey Adler 3 Todd Erickson
Yamaha Heavy Yamaha Lite
1 Mike Fuchs 1 Matt Cota
2 Craig Finger 2 Joel Steffen
3 Mark Baier 3 Mark Heinert
Briggs Heavy Briggs Animal Jr.
1 Mike Landeck 1 Caitlin Tannis
2 Tom Schroeder 2 Danny Corcoran
3 Tom Weber 3
Briggs Jr. Sport HPV Sr.
1 Steven Wirtz 1 Jesse Schwabe
2 Jimmy Cline Jr 2 Nicole Baier
3 Vince Heywood 3 Nate Gish
Briggs Lite HPV Jr.
1 Tylor Wolfert 1 Zack Emmons
2 Alex Stauber 2 Nick Gillette
3 Ryan Wolfert 3 TJ Nevels
Jr Can Jr. SSX Can
1 Kyle Gluth 1 Joe Brenner
2 Jesse Wirtz 2 TJ Nevels
3 Grant Hoffmeister 3 Shelley Krzewskinski
Jr. Briggs HPV Jr.
1 Derek Crane 1 Zack Emmons
2 Garret Wescott 2 Nick Gillette
3 Brian Weber 3 TJ Nevels
125cc Shifter Sr. Sportsman Heavy
1 Matt Mercier 1 Steve Mente
2 Brian Julien 2 Brian James
3 Chris Alby 3 Bob Ropke
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