Rain spoils sprint car race

 By Dan McGee, Special to the Fernley Reporter

Saturday looked like an epic night for Fernley 95A Speedway on Saturday evening. The Sprint Car Challenge Tour was visiting, a large crowd was on hand and Willie Croft set a blistering fast lap of 13.70 seconds during qualifying in his Americoat-Holy Smoke BBQ sprint car.

Rounding out the show was a field of IMCA A Modifieds that also had some fast times in the clay track. The night started full of promise and blazing speeds for the fans.

In addition three Northern Nevada drivers were in the sprint car field for their only appearance here this year. They were Tanner Thorson, who is starting to race in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series, Adam Walters and Dyllan Ogden.

Unfortunately after the halfway point in the modified feature Mother Nature intervened with rain so the racers were sent off the track for the rain delay.

After it appeared the night was going to be a long one the Modified race was declared finished as it had gone past the halfway point and Robert Miller was declared the winner. By now the track and sprint car officials had trucks circulating to keep the track surface from not entirely going away.

Finally the rain stopped after an hour and the sprint cars were back out wheel packing then doing hot laps. Things looked good once again but sadly many in the stands had already left.

Once the sprint cars were all back on the track and ready to start their main event the rains came again. The officials had no choice but to cancel the main event all the diehard fans were looking forward to.

It was a sad ending to what appeared to be a great night of racing. Hopefully the tour will return next year and Mother Nature will cooperate.