Carber wins Keith Kunz Motorsports Classic
After two nights of intense racing among more than 100 competitors, Pipersville, Pennsylvania’s Brian Carber won the TRD Keith Kunz Motorsports Giveback Classic presented by Rowdy Energy at Millbridge Speedway in North Carolina.
The grand prize for the race was the option of either a grand total of $15,000 in winnings or a ride in a KKM Midget at next year’s Chili Bowl Nationals.
For many drivers, a chance to compete with Keith Kunz at the biggest Midget race of the year would be impossible to pass up. However, Carber opted instead to take the money, passing up a once in a lifetime opportunity.
Carber explained that the money would go further towards building his own racing pro
gram moving forward.
“I’m 26 years old, trying to get my life going the past two years,” said Carber. “I had a bad concussion about three or four years ago and I’ve taken steps to come back in my progression. I’ve been running my 360 Sprint Car every chance I get.
“I have a family team back home. Our trailer is falling apart. We need to financially get back into it. My brother just had a couple of kids. Everyone’s enjoying themselves. We come down here to North Carolina, enjoy it and have fun.”
Carber took the lead from fellow Keystone State racer Alex Bright on lap 55 of the 67-lap feature. Despite a field of competitors that featured stars from NASCAR, Midget racing and beyond, it was a pair of Pennsylvania Micro Sprint racers fighting for the win.
Fans who missed Wednesday’s race will be able to watch highlights, an on-demand replay and more from the TRD Keith
Kunz Motorsports Giveback Classic presented by Rowdy Energy on Speed51. TV.
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Following a one-year hiatus due to the virus, the highly-anticipated Eastern Storm tour returns in 2021 for its 14th edition June 15-20 in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
The USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship will tackle five dates in a six-night stretch with the USAC Silver Crown Champ Car Series taking center stage for a single night.
The Sprint Cars begin 2021 Eastern Storm on Tuesday, June 15, at the 1/3-mile Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pa., the only track that has appeared on the schedule since Eastern Storm’s inaugural run in 2007.
The following night, on Wednesday, June 16, the Sprint Cars will make their debut on the recently reconfigured 4/10-mile Bridgeport Speedway in Swedesboro, N.J.
Fifty years after the USAC National Sprint Cars last visited Pennsylvania’s ½-mile Selinsgrove Speedway, the series is back on Thursday night, June 17
for the first time since Mitch Smith’s victory five decades earlier in 1971.
A night off for the Sprint Cars doesn’t mean a night off for USAC racing on Friday, June 18, when the USAC Silver Crown Champ Car Series races its way to Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania’s ½-mile Williams Grove Speedway.
USAC Sprints get back to work on Saturday night, June 19, at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway’s ½-mile. The tour closes out on Sunday night, June 20, with the USAC Sprint Car debut at the newly rejuvenated Bloomsburg (Pa.) Fairgrounds 3/8-mile dirt oval, where the sight and sound of auto racing of any kind has been absent for the past 40 summers.
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LOCAL RACING TALENT
HEADING TO LOUISIANA » Last year, Terry Fasnacht was surprised at the Bob Hilbert Sportswear Short Track Super Series (STSS) Fueled By Sunoco Awards Banquet with the Car Owner of the Year Award.
As the series heads to Louisiana to meet the Southern Super Modified group for a series of exhibition events, Fasnacht continues to show his ded
ication to the STSS. Not only will Fasnacht’s Conestoga Valley Custom Kitchens team field one car for its regular driver Mike Gular on the Bayou; they’ll bring a second for Pennsylvania star Jeff Strunk, who served as a mentor for Gular through the early stages of his career. Both of the drivers call Boyertown, PA home and both have been standout performers at Grandview Speedway.
Both Gular and Strunk will be aboard the familiar No. 2A Bicknell cars as the STSS breaks new ground on Louisiana soil competing at Ark-La-Tex Speedway in Vivian Wednesday, November 11 (40 laps, $4,000 to win) and Thursday, November 12 (50 laps, $5,000 to win) before working two hours east to Chatham Speedway in Chatham for Friday night Qualifying and Saturday’s 75-lap, $20,000-to-win ‘Mods in the Marsh’ special.
All events will be broadcast live on Dirt Track Digest TV (www.dirttrackdigest.tv) for those unable to attend in-person.
Gular enters the Louisiana ‘Cajun Swing’ after a successful 2020 campaign that has included a track
championship at Big Diamond Speedway in Minersville, Pa., two top-five finishes in the STSS Modified Halmar International North (second) and Velocita-USA South Region (fifth) standings and a Diamond Nationals triumph among other highlights.
Strunk is riding the momentum from a convincing $35,000-plus victory in the Freedom 76 at Pa.’s Grandview Speedway driving for Glenn Hyneman. ***
Bridgeport Speedway in Logan Township, NJ will host the debut of the “South Jersey Holiday Light Show,” a drive-thru event promised by promoters to “save the magic of the holiday season” for families with limited options for celebrating amid a pandemic now making an unwelcome comeback of its own.
“It is a family-friendly event, and it’s probably going to be the case where a lot of people aren’t going to be able to travel and see their family, or go to Rockefeller Center,” said Bold Media Chief Operating Officer Andrew Adams, referring to the hypercrowded annual Christmas Tree display in Manhattan. “But this is an opportunity for families to start a new tradition.”
The light show will open Nov. 19, and will take place Thursday-Sunday evenings through New Year’s weekend, starting at 5 p.m. The online ticket price is $23 per car.
Cars, pickups and SUV’s (no buses) will drive at low speed through a milelong route set up on the grounds of the speedway, where they will pass by individual displays up to 50 feet long and “three stories tall,” made from steel frames and colored lights depicting Santa passing out presents, candle and poinsettia arrangements, snowflakes and other holiday scenes, some of them with moving parts. As they go, motorists tuned into an FM radio signal set up just for the show will listen along to a holiday musical soundtrack synchronized to the displays.
The experience will last about 20 minutes, and cars will drive a route that meanders around the speedway site, not on the oval track itself.