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[/media-credit]Early Friday morning 22 year old John Wes Townley was arrested for DUI for the second time in his career. Townley, who just inked a deal to drive in the Camping World Truck Series with RAB Racing, crashed his car into a telephone pole while apparently being under the influence of alcohol. RAB Racing, Townley’s new Camping World Truck Series team, suspended the driver until they feel he can return.
Don’t misunderstand me. RAB Racing and team owner Robby Benton should be commended for their actions after the incident with Townley. They made the proper decision in this deal, especially since Zaxby’s, Townley’s sponsor, is owned by John Wes Townley’s father. It was a risky move by RAB Racing.
While RAB Racing was suspending Townley and the NASCAR world was learning about the horrible incident with the 22 year old, NASCAR themselves were……well. Nobody really knows.
If you went on NASCAR’s website, you could read an article about Juan Pablo Montoya’s new crew chief, Chris Heroy or you could read about Jeff Gordon being “Fired up.” And the article about John Wes Townley? There isn’t any.
It’s absolutely obscured that NASCAR, a sport which has a no tolerance with drugs, doesn’t even make a comment, or put an article on their website or make a comment saying they were disappointed in the situation or anything.
NASCAR does nothing.
It reminds me of a situation in the early 1990’s when another young racecar driver got in trouble with the law several times and had several DUI’s including incidents that NASCAR did nothing about.
That driver, whose name is I shall not say, had another accident one night where he lost his life after a race at Rockingham in 1990.
Do the right thing for John Wes Townley NASCAR! Do the right thing! God forbid we have another incident like we did in 1990. Nobody ever wants to see that again.
Quit pretending like this stuff is not happening and put your foot down.
Brian France, Mike Helton and everyone involved, you should be ashamed!
RAB Racing Suspends John Wes Townley: Outrageoous!
USAC Amsoil Sprint Cars Start Season in High Gear
The first points race of the USAC Amsoil Sprint Car series is in the books. Tonight was the first race of the season and the first of a 3 night show at Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala Florida. The USAC stars were out in force with names like Bryan Clausson and series champion Levi Jones in the field.
The qualifying of the 30 car field was smooth and uneventful save for one accident involving Jake Simmons who hit the wall and over turned following his second lap of qualifying. Simmons crawled from the car under his own power and walked away. He was however, unable to make call for his heat race and was done for the evening.
Fast time went to Bryan Clauson with a lap of 14.409 seconds around the 3/8ths mile track. Clauson broke team mate Levi Jones record set last year with his run.
The 30 car field ran 4 heat races with the top 4 transferring to the A main and a B main with the top 6 transferring to the A main.
The heat races were hotly contested races with three and four wide competition through out the pack. Heat race winners included Brady Bacon, Jon Stanbrough, Damien Gardner, and Casey Schuman.
The B Main was action packed event that was won by Justin Grant with a hard charging Chris Stockon coming home 2nd. The B main would set up an interesting scenario when Chris Windom would spin out of the final transfer spot with just 5 laps to go. Unable to climb any further than 7th, Windom would be forced to take a provisional to get into the A Main and start next to last.
The A main was a fast paced event that ran with only one caution until lap 25 of the 30 posted laps. The hot dry track had begun to take rubber out of four and passing became difficult. On lap one Silver Crown Champion Levi Jones spun coming out 4 and collected two other cars. All cars were able to continue but it forced a complete restart with the three cars involved going to the back of the field.
Damien Gardner lead for nearly the whole race only giving up the lead briefly on lap 25 when the caution flew for another series of spins out of turn 4. After 4 attempts the field finally went green and Gardner took the point for the final time. Brady Bacon ended up 3rd but paced Gardner for most of the race fading in the last 3 laps.
Gardner whose A main victory is his 5th out of 6 attempts in Florida, made the victory seem effortless with the exception of the restart when he briefly lost the lead to Bacon.
The final finishing order for the opening night of the season was: 1) Damion Gardner 2) Jon Stanbrough 3) Brady Bacon 4) Darren Hagen 5) Bryan Clauson 6) Bud Kaeding 7) Dave Darland 8) Casey Shuman 9) Kevin Thomas 10) Justin Grant 11) Chris Windom 12) Levi Jones 13) Tracey Hines 14) Robert Ballou.
Silver Crown Champion Levi Jones made a courageous recovery after his 1st lap spin finishing 12th.
Also on the card tonight was the unvieling of an electric midget built in Columbus Indiana. The car was driven around the track by Casey Shuman. The car which made almost no noise at all, seemed to have enough power to slide it sideways and get it’s front wheel off the ground out of four. The midget is the only car of it’s kind and Shuman seemed pleased with it’s performance. “If they can build a few more of them we can take them out and see how they stand up.” He stated.
Tomorrow nights action begins at 6 PM EST and can be viewed via live stream pay for view at
Rahal Letterman Lanigan Signs Takumo Sato for 2012 IZOD IndyCar Season
Rahal Letterman Lanigan recently announced that they had signed Takumo Sato to drive for them in 2012.
“I think we all look forward to having him with us because, as I said earlier, he’s shown his pace over the last couple years in IndyCars,” co-owner Bobby Rahal says of the announcement. “As I said in the beginning when we reentered IndyCar racing, it was important for us to do so with someone who was going to be competitive. I had no real interest in just being here. Taku certainly fits that bill.
“I think we are quite excited for the start of the year. We have testing to do yet. We’ve done a little bit already in December which went I think pretty well. So I think everybody’s just anxious to get going.”
Rahal adds that he’s excited about working with Sato due to their friendship. The relationship between Rahal and Sato began back in 2001 when Sato was running Formula 3.
“I had a chance to see Taku not when he first started racing but when he was Europe in England in Formula 3 in 2001 when I was over there with Jaguar Formula One,” Rahal says. “I managed to watch Takuma win a lot of Formula 3 races. I think Formula 3 has always been considered a very good judge of talent.
“Of course, you know, I kept an eye on him when he was in Formula One. So I’ve known his competitiveness, his speed. I’ve seen that many times over the years.”
Sato says he made the move as Rahal offered him a good offer and the team has a great history.
“The numbers in racing is very impressive winning record,” Sato says. “It’s just great success. Okay, the IndyCar Series wasn’t entering full-time in a couple years, but they showing great speed last year every single time they were entering IndyCar. So I was very confident.”
Sato says he has high expectations for this year and excited about the new operation. The addition of Sato to the team isn’t the only change as Rahal moved the team to Brownsburg, Indiana over the off-season.
“It’s really become the center of IndyCar racing, the Indianapolis area,” Rahal says of the move. “You look at the resource that exists here within the area, both the human resource, but the subcontractors, what have you, that can provide services for an IndyCar team.
“It just seemed to me that we needed to be in sort of the epicenter of IndyCar racing now that we were going to come back into it on a full-time basis. So we managed to lease the space that Gil de Ferran used to be in from my friend Don Prudhomme. It’s a nice shop up here in Brownsburg. This is a start for us. But the IndyCar team will certainly be headquartered here for many years to come because we think this is the place to be both for now and in the future.”
Rahal added earlier this week that the team is looking into options of adding a second car to make the team better for 2012. Though if another team is not put together, it is okay.
“While a single-car team may not be ideal, I think your ability to be competitive is just as good there as anywhere else,” he says. “You’re able to focus all your efforts on one driver, one car, a small group of people tightly knit. That can do a lot of good things.
“In the end, if we have our options, we want to be a two-car team. We’re working hard for that. I think we will be. So that’s how we’re going forward at this stage.”
Ryan Reed Beats The Odds, Ready to Run Daytona for Venturini Motorsports
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[/media-credit]In February 2011, Ryan Reed was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes (T1D). A year later and the 18-year-old from Bakersfield, California is ready to make his debut with Venturini Motorsports in the ARCA Racing Series presented by Menards season opener at Daytona International Speedway on February 18th. Reed will behind the wheel of the No. 15 JDRF racecar for the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200, with support from Advance Auto Parts.
“Racing at Daytona is a dream-come true,” Reed says. “Since I was a kid I dreamed of the day I would have the opportunity to compete on the historic track. And then to go to the test with Venturini Motorsports in December and be at the top of the charts on the first day was unreal!”
When Reed was diagnosed with T1D last year, his was told that his racing career was over. Instead of listening, Reed turned that on its head and shifted his focus to managing his health and educating himself.
Now back behind the wheel, Reed is one of three professional racecar drivers in the world to compete at a high level of racing with T1D. One of the other drivers with T1D is IndyCar driver Charlie Kimball, who was diagnosed in 2007.
Beyond just getting back behind the heel, Reed is using his story and racing to inspire others to continue living their lives to the fullest if they’ve
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[/media-credit]been diagnosed. He has also become the National Celebrity Adocate for JDRF, the world’s largest funder of research towards curing, treating and preventing T1D and its complications.
“JDRF has an amazing group of people that are involved in the organization. We’ve been working with them locally, and on a national level more recently. I feel like part of the family whenever we do events together,” Reed says. “I just feel so fortunate that I can inspire others and create such a positive atmosphere after being diagnosed with a life-long disease.”
In designing the paint scheme, Reed teamed up with Sam Bass, who was NASCAR’s first officially licensed artist and design icon. This paint scheme means something to Bass, too, as he was diagnosed with T1D in 1992.
“I am thrilled to be working with such a talented, young, up and coming driver as Ryan Reed,” Bass says. “His partnership with JDRF has a tremendously special meaning to me, as I also have type 1 diabetes, and have dealt with the disease all of my life. I can relate first hand to the goals and initiatives JDRF has set to help people living with diabetes, and to find a cure. JDRF does very impactful work, and I am extremely proud to assist them in their marketing efforts with the Venturini Motorsports Team and Ryan.”
Practice for the season-opening race starts on Thursday, February 16, while qualifying is Friday, February 17 at 2pm. The race, scheduled to be televised live by SPEED-TV, is Saturday, February 18 at 4:30pm ET.
Joey Coulter Set To Embark on Second Full Camping World Truck Series Season
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[/media-credit]In 2011, Joey Coulter had his biggest year in racing to date as he moved up to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series to run the entire schedule for Richard Childress Racing. The year was a success as with five top fives and 13 top 10s, Coulter won the Rookie of the Year award.
“It’s the biggest accomplishment of my career,” the driver of the No. 22 Darrell Gwynn Foundation Chevrolet Silverado says. “The whole team put in a lot of effort. Right from the beginning the year, that was the goal that Mr. Childress set for our team. Austin winning it last year added a little bit of positive pressure for us to try to win it and the whole team – all of us – we kept pushing forward and at the end of the year, we were able to keep it together and bring it home. It was a really important, huge accomplishment.”
For this season, Coulter will once again run the entire Camping World Truck Series schedule for Richard Childress Racing. With a year under his belt and teammate Austin Dillon winning the championship last season, the pressure is there.
“We feel like seeing what Austin, my teammate, did last year, we really got a good shot at the championship,” he says. “There’s obviously a lot of tough competition out there – James Buescher, Ron Hornaday – I could name hundreds of them. But I really feel like we have a good opportunity to go out there and run for a championship.
“I saw a lot of great things with the team near the end of last season. The pit stops went from good to great. The communication between my crew chief, Harold Holly, and me just got better. The goal is to win a few races and come home with the championship.”
With the new year, though, there comes a change in the line-up as with Austin Dillon moving up to the NASCAR Nationwide Series, Coulter’s new teammate for 2012 will be Austin’s little brother Ty Dillon. Coulter says that he’s looking forward to working with Ty this year.
“The few races that Ty ran last year – he did an awesome job,” Coulter adds. “We talked at the shop last year – I think we’re going to work great together. We both watched the Daytona race from last year and gone over a lot of notes, just kinda talked back and forth about a lot of different things. We both pumped up and ready to get there.”
The beginning of the season will start in two weeks with the NextEra Energy Resources 250 at Daytona International Speedway. The race will be run on Friday February 24th at 7pm EST.
“I’m really excited to get back to Daytona,” Coulter says. “I think it’s going to be exciting. I don’t know if the tandem thing is going to go away or not – but it’s going to be great. I love super speedway races and I think seeing all the work that the guys back at the shop – the body shop – put into this speedway truck and the awesome motors they build, I’m really looking forward it. We’re going to have an awesome hotrod.”
Besides running the truck race, Coulter will also run in the Lucas Oil Slick Mist 200 at Daytona on February 18th in the ARCA Racing Series for his father’s team. This year marks a big year for ARCA as it is their 60th year of competition.
“I think it’s awesome,” Coulter says. “I really like the ARCA Series a lot. Even though I only ran two full seasons myself, my dad still has an ARCA team that’s going to run the majority of the races this year with Matt Lofton in the car so I really think that’s an awesome series. I’m really excited that they’ve been around 60 years. It’s a huge stepping-stone series. That’s how a lot of people look at it – like the minor league NASCAR. It’s a league of its own. It helps young drivers, even younger than me, and older drivers learn how to drive a really heavy car on a big fast race track with a lot of horsepower. It’s a great series. I’m glad my dad’s team is going to be able to run this year.”
Part of the off-season for Coulter was spent helping his dad with setting up the ARCA program for 2012. Coulter kept busy during the off-season, going to classes as he is a mechanical engineering student at UNC while working out and doing pit crew practice at RCR. He also embarked on a new journey as he bought a dirt super late model to start racing.
“Never been on dirt before so it’s going to be an exciting new venture,” Coulter says.
Though as February rolls around and Daytona Speedweeks are near, the focus will soon turn to the 2012 NASCAR season for Coulter as he goes not only for his first NASCAR championship, but his first truck win. It’s very easily possible that it could come on a favourite track of Coulter’s.
“I look forward to places like Delaware,” Coulter says of his favourite tracks. “Iowa is one of my favorites. I love Martinsville, Bristol, O’Reilly Raceway Park – ‘cause those are the short tracks. There are a lot of places that I like to race at.”
He sums it up by saying that his favourite race track is the one that he goes to next.
