A Lap Around Antioch with Candice – Dean Cline Classic

by Candice Martin

 

It’s time for the Dean Cline Classic. Over the years, Chris Bennett and I have talked about this. He’s the Race Director, and he has a passion for this race track.

 

Back a few years ago, Chris instigated a big Hobby Stock race that had a huge turnout. I think that’s the first time we discussed doing something for Dean. He was in a position to make this race a reality last year, and it went well.

 

Dean raced out here for many years in many different classes. He probably would have racked up a few championships if points were what he was after. He won over 40 Main Events in multiple classes. 

 

He was good at building race cars. He built them fast, and that rubbed off on his son Lance, Lance became the premier car builder out here for a time in the 1990s.

 

Last year, they had Kevin Beard build a model of Dean’s car. Kevin does model recreations of some of the old race cars of the past. He does a really good job with it. He has also filmed the races through the years, and he finally got a race car to go racing again this year. 

 

I’m not sure if he’s been asked to do the model again this year, but it will be a nice model if he does.

 

The most recent Hobby Stock race pulled in 29 cars, and I think we’re going to need that kind of a turnout for this race. We’ll run what we have, but I am a little bit nervous about what we have on the schedule this week.

 

The Dwarf Cars might be a little abused after last weekend. There are a couple of locals who didn’t run the Nationals, but I don’t know what kind of a car count we’ll be looking at there. 

 

Though there are quite a few Hardtops out there since the revival 15 years ago, if we get much more than seven or eight cars, we’ll be doing well there. They’re neat cars to watch. 

 

The Micro Sprints are very popular at Dixon and Delta Speedway’s, but we haven’t been able to get big support for anything we’ve booked for them. I guess we’ll see.

 

One thing I’m wondering is why we didn’t book the Figure 8 for this week. Seems like it would have been a perfect fit and more attractive for the fans. It’s happening the following week instead.

 

We’ll run this race and make the best of it. I’m not sure if this will end up being an extra distance race. Dean ran the #50, so it could be a 50 lap race. Then again, drivers don’t like going the long distance the way they used to. I guess we’ll find out.