<\/p>\n
Circling an extremely slick track in his red nonwinged sprint car at speeds approaching 100 mph, Jason Grady probably felt some butterflies.<\/p>\n
Piloting small cars equipped 850 horsepower engines nothing new for Grady however, and thus, a few nervous moments during victories at Fairgrounds Speedway on Friday and Saturday night did little to faze the longtime driver, who has been racing since he was 15.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Sprint cars) are like a wild beasts,\u201d said Grady, who races out of Farmington. \u201cThey\u2019re like a car on serious steroids.\u201d<\/p>\n
Among the highlights of the weekend\u2019s sprint car action was a wild crash on Saturday night that resulted when Las Lunas, New Mexico driver Bill Waltman lost control on the back straightaway and rolled several times before coming to rest on a berm above the track.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what happens when you come up on somebody too fast,\u201d said Waltman, who walked away from the wreck with a broken finger from which the bone was protruding. \u201cThe car is completely junked, but the track was great, and we\u2019ll be back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Other highlights included several nail-biting finishes in several International Motor Contest Association classes that included sport-compacts, hobby-stocks, sport-mods, modifieds and sprint cars.<\/p>\n
Local hobby stock driver Brooklyn Kibel finished first in the hobby stock class on Friday night, and Dove Creek resident Cameron Spangler finished fifth in the sport-mod class on Saturday night. Complete results for all the classes were not available as of the press deadline.<\/p>\n
Throughout the two-night racing event, fans consistently cheered despite spats of rain and after the conclusion of the races, drivers agreed that they will not soon forget the slick Cortez track and the near-capacity crowd.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Fairgrounds Speedway) is totally different than my hometown track in Albuquerque,\u201d Grady said. \u201cHere, it\u2019s real finesse. \u201cThis is the slickest place I\u2019ve ever been to and I\u2019ve been all over the country.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love this race track, it\u2019s just amazing\u201d added Spangler. \u201cWe have cars coming all the way from Arizona and Texas this year and the racing has been really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
A total of 17 sprint cars raced at the track over the weekend, marking the first time that the high powered cars have competed in Cortez in nearly 20 years. While sprint cars will not compete at every race in Cortez this season, sprint car drivers will return to the area for a race in July.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really cool to see the sprint cars back,\u201d Spangler said. \u201cPeople love them and it\u2019s really cool for the race track.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
finishes, big crashes and packed stands highlight weekend races<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":70920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[21,2362,29,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-70919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cortez","tag-motor-racing","tag-newsletter","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70919\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/70920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70919"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=70919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}