Racing has started for the Terrace Speedway as it kicked off its season May 8.
Drivers put on quite a show for spectators as seven bomber class cars and two thunder class cars hit the track on Mother's Day.
Because there were only two thunder cars out for the day, thunder class races were counted as exhibition. However, this didn’t lessen the carnage as rookie driver of car number 68 Marcel Spory lost control on the back straightaway and crashed into the inside retaining wall, walking away uninjured although seriously bending his vehicle.
“It was a fairly hard crash, he basically hit the wall at full speed coming out of corner two,” said Kris Sweet from the Terrace Speedway.
“But he walked away fine,” he added.
The car was too damaged to get back in the races, but according to car owner Terry Reinert the vehicle should be up and running by the next race day.
It was primarily rookie drivers taking on the B bomber races and it was three different winners who took the top spot in the three events.
The trophy dash went to car number 112, driven by Tyler Morton. The heat race went to car number 8 driven by Dennis Beaudette and the main event was won by car number 1 driven by rookie driver Sunny Singh.
For the A bomber races Reinert managed to go undefeated in the trophy, heat and main event races. He was followed closely by Trevor Reinert, of no relation, who ran a strong second.
Sweet said turnout was decent for the event.
“It was also one of the nicest weekends we have had so far,” he said. “So for the weather we had the turnout was good.”
Kent Goddard almost broke a track record in the thunder class when he made it through one lap in 19.53 seconds, beating out Dan Parnell's previous track record of 19.69 seconds.
However, upon technical inspection, the car did not meet the rules thunder car rules, something Sweet said the driver plans to have amended for the next race day.
The next race will be in June and the speedway expects to see nine bombers and four thunder class cars out for the day.
The next Saturday night race is June 4, starting at 7 p.m.