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ARDC Opens Season at Lincoln Speedway
ARDC CARQUEST Midgets to Open '99 Season April 17 at Lincoln NEW OXFORD, Pa., Feb. 17 - The American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC) CARQUEST Midget Series will begin a two-year 60th anniversary celebration at its 1999 season ...
Edited: May 8, 2001, 12:19 PM
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ARDC CARQUEST Midgets to Open '99 Season April 17 at Lincoln
NEW OXFORD, Pa., Feb. 17 - The American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC) CARQUEST Midget Series will begin a two-year 60th anniversary celebration at its 1999 season opener on Saturday, April 17 at Lincoln Speedway in New Oxford, Pa.
The club, which was formed in the winter months of 1939 and staged its first race on May 15, 1940, will also appear at Lincoln on Aug. 21 and Sept. 11. The Aug. 21 show will be run without wings, which is a promoter's option with ARDC.
The complete 1999 schedule is still pending, and will be released as soon as possible.
Last year there were also three ARDC CARQUEST Midget Series shows on Lincoln's three-eighths mile clay oval, resulting in three different winners. Stepping into victory lane there in 1998 were John Heydenreich of Bloomsburg, Pa. and Indianapolis, Ind.; Ed Stimely Jr. of McVeytown, Pa.; and Walt Stearly of Trappe, Pa.
As further proof of how competitive the ARDC CARQUEST Midget Series is, that trio used three different chassis manufacturers to record their victories. Heydenreich was in John Givens' Beast Gaerte; Stimely was in Harold Yetter's Creek Gaerte; and Stearly drove his own Hawk Pontiac. (Stearly won the wingless show last year.)
The 1998 drivers' championship came down to a difference of only one point, with Bryan Kobylarz of Birdsboro, Pa., defeating Stimely for that title. The car owners' championship went to Stimely's car owner, Harold Yetter, by only two points over Kobylarz's car owners, Doug and Claudette Starrett.
That kind of close competition is what fans at Lincoln can expect to see at the season opener on April 17 as well as the Aug. 21 and Sept. 11 shows and the rest of the stops in the 1999 ARDC CARQUEST Midget Series schedule.
Since it was formed in 1939, ARDC has provided top-notch midget competition. Its first sanctioned race was on Wednesday night, May 15, 1940 at Cedarhurst Speedway on Long Island in New York. That track was a quarter-mile paved oval near where Kennedy International Airport is now located. The promoter of the event that night was Walter Stebbins, and 46 midgets were entered. The four heats went to Ed "Dutch" Schaefer, Tony Bonadies, club president Bill Schindler and Honey Purick. Schindler won the feature over Purick, Len Duncan, Georgie Rice and Bonadies.
At the end of the season Schindler was the club's first driver champion and Ed Van Nostrand was its first owners' champion.
Today drivers like Kobylarz; Stimely; Mark Freeland of Ickesburg, Pa.; Phil DiMario of Piermont, N.Y.; Bill Courtwright of Hackettstown, N.J.; Mark Wakefoose of Hopatcong, N.J.; Fred Schell of Phoenixville, Pa.; Gary Mondschein of Stewartsville, N.J.; Ray Bull of New Oxford, Pa., and Mike Lapp of Slatington, Pa., along with a host of others, continue that tradition in the ARDC CARQUEST Midget Series.
The 1999 action will start at Lincoln on April 17, with the gates opening at 5 p.m., warm-ups starting at 6:30 p.m., and the racing beginning at 7 p.m. Super sprints and thunder cars will share the card with the ARDC CARQUEST Midgets that night.
The track is located 1.7 miles east of State Route 94 on U.S. 30, very near the Abbottstown border, and then a half-mile south on Kineman Road.
For further information, call the track personnel at 717-697-1321 or 717-624-2755.
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