made the b o s s show at Montpelier and it was a good one, the pits were packed with the 43 410 non wing sprint cars signed in, along with about 30 each on the other classes, mods, stock cars and bombers (about 2 too many classes imho) it was was my first trip to this track and I liked what I saw, it was a larger than average 1/4 mile, and was a semi banked d-shaped track which is well inside the city limits of the cool little town. it reminded me a lot of the track and scenerio at mercer, pa. the grandstands were packed and the I told anyone who wanted to listen that robert ballou would take the win, and after early leader jon stanbrough spun after coming into contact with a lapped car, ballou and scotty weir put on a torrid battle, which was eventually won by Robert ballou. the track prep folks had re-worked and watered the track before the sprint feach and imho did not get turns 1 and 2 packed in quite well enough, as early leader branden spithaler caught a rut between 1 and 2 and took a wild ride involving a series of flips. he was able to crawl out seemingly uninjured, however his car began to smoke from the engine compartment and it seemed to take the fire truck forever getting to it, spithaler ripped the bonnet off himself so the fire (open flames by then) could be extinguished. I don't understand why other members of the track safety crew did not have fire extinguishers, could have prevented a lot of damage. then on the restart there was a massive melee in which tod keen, josh spencer and joss Moffatt all flipped and were done for the night. jon stanbrough then pulled out into a sizable lead, but spun when he tangled with a car he was lapping., which set up the battle between ballou and weir. then after the sprint feach, I was going to stick around to watch the modified feach, and the match race between stanbrough and an old wedge type late model with side panels/ but the announcer advised that a driver was having issues and needed to be transported to the hospital, and they would have to wait on a 2nd ambulance to arrive at the track before the track ambulance could leave (which I thought was ridiculous) the announcer seemed poorly informed as he did not advise who the driver was and whether he had been injured in one of the previous crashes, or was injured in the pits, or whether he had taken ill. i waited for awhile, but was getting cold and I was getting sleepy and headed on back to the long 2 plus hour drive back to the nati/ I heard Gilpin won that mod feach, haven't heard how the $200.00 winner take all match race turned out. I can see a usac race taking place at Montpelier in the future/ but track promoter, please : always have 2 ambulances on site when racing sprint cars (hopefully they won't be needed, but just in case) and for crying out loud invest in some fire extinguishers and see too it that everyone on your safety grew has one! oh, and I was disappointed that the midgets were not on the schedule last night, as Montpelier has been running midgets as of the past couple seasons. but all in all it was another enjoyable evening of some excellent racing.
