Xtreme Racing News

The close to Fonda Speedway's 2017 season was quite an eventful one. The action started Friday night with Kyle Smith taking the CRSA event, Bobby Varin taking his 2nd straight KoD win in the Modifieds with Rocky Warner winning in the Sportsmans and Gus Hollner in the Pro Stocks.

Saturday? Well this could take awhile, the action started at 7 for the Super DirtCar Series, ESS/URC/PST 360's, Pro Stocks and Street Stocks. Stewart Friesen was running double duty and raced 12 hours after running New Hampshire earlier on in the day. The Modifieds started good but it got ugly fast, tires tires tires. Literally everyone in the field but FOUR did not pit during the feature. Billy Decker had an early issue with the tires but thankfully Matt Sheppard and Larry Wight weren't that close to the front after starting in the rear with backups. Sheppard had to pit twice in the feature and Wight blew his tire late in the race causing a pile up with Josh Hohenforst, Rich Scagliotta and Mike Maresca, who had a night he wants to forget. Stewart Friesen blew a tire trying to re-catch Peter Britten and then blew another one 8 laps later, Friesen who was already on race 2 on the day, left the race to get ready for the Sprints. Danny Varin had halfway tire issues as well. The big problem, Peter Britten had multiple issues, one when he was leading, giving the lead to track champion Tim Fuller and watch out, cause here we go. After numerous more caution for tires, we had a shootout for the win between Fuller, Bobby Varin and remember Danny Varin? Well he made his way up front again. It looked like Fuller had it on the last lap until he entered turn 2... the tire went, the one thing Fuller didn't want and it happened. Bobby Varin took the lead on the backstretch and went on to win over his son Danny and Pat Ward. Danny went on to win the joint 360 race at 2 in the morning over Friesen. Varin swept the weekend and has now won 4 straight events, 3 at Fonda and 1 at Albany-Saratoga. Friesen? Lets just say he ran 3 races in 12 hours (4 if you count the flight trying to get here).

So now you ask, why so many tires and why to the same people? Well the track was not cooperating with anyone, you HAD to be careful with the tires. It was hard, so hard that if you even attempted to push it, like Wight did, you'll lose a tire. I've never seen that at Fonda or anywhere else, I've seen races where fuel has been a problem (Syracuse 2013), but never tires.