By: Ron Burt
I wish all of you a very fun and safe Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you for supporting my weekly racing column and for supporting my Facebook page, Ohio Sports Blitz and my Facebook Live scoreboards. I’m still doing weekly high school football playoff scores for every game in the state and starting this week the women’s high school basketball scores and the men’s scores when they start playing. These Live nightly scoreboards will run until the high school basketball state championships end. I cover over 20 high school conferences. Because of you, an average of 2,000 followers a week log into my high school live scoreboards.
Racetracks in the Tri-state might be closed until April but USAC Midgets and Sprints are on the west coast with nightly races. Dirt Late Model drivers are competing in big money races all over the south. It’s not easy for our area drivers, working 9-5 weekly, then driving all night to Georgia, Alabama Florida or Mississippi to practice, qualify and race Saturday night. And then turn around and make the long drive home. They do it, in hopes of a big win and payday and for the love of the sport and national competition.
One of my favorite racing classes is the USAC Midwest Thunder Midgets. Greg Watson describes this class as, “We aren’t trying to take the place of Sprints/LM or National midgets. Just a series that grassroots racers enjoy and want to hang out together- all about the community.” Many of you have seen them at Limaland, Fremont, Kokomo and other Tri-state dirt tracks. It’s an excellent class to prepare drives for the National Midgets and Sprints.
Jason Bennett is one of the three newest drivers that will joining the Midwest Thunder midgets this spring. Jason is from the Cincinnati area and has previous experience in Lightning sprints. He is currently building his car. Another driver looking to run a full schedule is Jon Watson. He has run a part-time schedule with USAC Midwest Thunder Midgets since moving to St Louis in 2017. He has relocated to Columbus Ohio and plans to run a full schedule in 2025 in his new Ecotec midget, sponsored by Faith Group, LLC, a St Louis based consulting and engineering firm specializing in security, IT and building systems for transportation clients. Taten Long of Miller City, Ohio is also joining the Thunder Midget Class. Taten has been racing karts, and he and his dad Mark recently bought the beautiful #16 midget from Bobby Blount.
Congrats to Thunder Midget 2023 Champion Zach Wigal for being named the DARF Rookie of The Year Award Winner of 2024. Zach was given a ride last summer with the USAC NOS National Midget Series. He’s set a couple of fast qualifying times, heat wins and one feature win. The young Ohio driver is currently racing with the National Series in California. Until next week, keep your wheels down. Ron out!
