5/12/2023
Antioch Speedway
A Lap Around Antioch with Candice Martin - May 13, 2023
I'm happy that we were able to rescue the Larry Damitz Memorial race from exclusion from the schedule last year. That was quite a night as Michael Burch picked up the win. Michael first raced with us back in the 1970s in the Sportsman division.
When he came back to racing a few years ago, he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. He'd been wanting to return for several years and finally had a car built at the shop of Nick DeCarlo.
DeCarlo had driven his car to a win earlier in the year, but Michael surprised everybody by leading every lap of Larry's race to win the championship belt and the $1,000 prize money.
I had been living in Oregon at the time that this race was started, but I started speaking about it on social media and got Pete Paulsen to donate a big trophy to the winner of this class for the first two years that this race was run. Mark Garner won them both.
I'm just happy we're able to honor Larry. He was truly an inspiration to everybody, not just to be able to race but to race as well as he did at his age.
Brian Cooper and Jerry Bartlett put together this amazing Hobby Stock series that brings the drivers from all over the state to run under this West Coast Hobby Stock banner.
They had 45 cars at Merced Speedway, and we should see something similar on this occasion. This means fans of fendered Stock Car racing should see over 60 cars between these two classes.
We've gotten off to a bit of a rough start, with exception of the big Sprint Car race we had a few weeks back. The weather should be better, and we're hoping to get a bigger crowd on Saturday night. I'm glad to have gotten the belt for the Pro Stock race and trophies for both them and the Hardtops, who don't race for money.
After this race, we'll be racing a couple of times during the County Fair. We're also setting up a table, and I am looking forward to interacting with fair goers and trying to stir up some excitement for the races. That weekend will also feature the return of the Figure 8 on May 20th, and I think that will be a hit for the fairtime croud.
We just keep working on it and doing the best we can, but I think we have a good one scheduled for Saturday night.
