WESCAR Season Underway

Monday, May 07, 2007 07:15 PM

Korbin Thomas of Williams Lake was the winner of the OK Tire WESCAR 100.

To open the 2007 WESCAR season the teams and their haulers traveled to SunValley Speedway for the running of the WESCAR 100. Fifteen teams made the journey, 2 teams from as far away as Terrace and another 2 teams from Fort St. John while others traveled from slightly closer hometowns. There were some local teams willing to take on the challenge of the OKTire Challenge Series and some of them met with success.

The Saturday practice session hinted that a track record may fall and on Sunday the fast qualifier had to beat a 19.56 second lap set in 2004 by #18 Korbin Thomas in his CP Electronics Chev. The drivers drew their selection of qualifying positions after the drivers’ meeting and the #18 Thomas ironically drew the last qualifying spot. The previous
record did fall during qualifying, in all 4 drivers beat the old record, with each driver hoping they had captured the fast time of the day. The last qualifier, #18 Thomas, dashed all their hopes as he made a pass of 19.097 to better his own and all the others attempts to set a new record. The other drivers to beat the old record were #5 Bob
Williams, 19.445; #38 Lee Thomas, 19.462; # 92 Gary MacCarthy, 19.523.

The heats and dashes showed that there was a strong challenge being made by the local drivers. The # 74 Dean Thornton proved he could run well by winning the C-dash as did #36 Joe Cornet-Ching winning the B-Dash, #38 Lee Thomas took the top spot in the A dash. The other Fort St. John driver #22 Chris Babcock proved his abilities winning the B-heat and #23 Peter Ernst showed he had the puppies growling under the hood when he won the A-heat.

As the track started to cool in the late afternoon sun the 14 teams entered the track for the running of the OKTire Challenge Series WESCAR 100. The #17 Leonard Wilnechenko had earlier in a heat race experienced an engine related mechanical problem and was not able to make the feature race of the day. When the green flag was shown to the competitors they raced clean and green with a few minor cautions. One yellow flag was flown early in the race when #14 Ian Black was caught
up in an incident coming off turn 4 with the #52 Garnet Grimard. The result of the contact forced the #14 to drive up and over the front hood of #52 , bringing back memories of a similar incident in turn 2 in 2004 when #10 Tim Kish drove over the hood of #17 Leonard Wilnechenko. The #52 had to escape to the pits to have his crew completely remove the front cowling, hood, and fenders. The #14 also went to the pit area but not to deal with damage but to chase down an electrical problem that had had been affecting them all day.

Other cautions flew for minor incidents and the race saw a variety of leaders. The William's Lake driver #18 Korbin Thomas who started in the back due to the full inversion worked his way forward to the front and by lap 38 had the lead and rarely looked back except to check on Quesnel's #23 Peter Ernst’s progress who was about 2 seconds behind with the Summerland driver #36 Joe Cornet-Ching in 3rd behind him. That was the finishing order when they passed under the checkers to complete the opening race of the 2007 OKTire Challenge Series. The next race in the series will be at Prince George’s PGARA speedway May 26, 2007. Check the website www.wescarracing.com for all the pictures, schedule and news in the OKTire Challenge Series.