Stenhouse Wins Tony Bettenhausen 100
by Jay Hardin
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The traditional two days of auto racing on the last weekend of the Illinois State Fair saw four different winners, youth served, several records set and both days schedule significantly altered due to the rain that plagued Central Illinois all weekend.
Saturday, August 18, was set aside for the 47th Tony Bettenhausen 100 for the K&N Engineering USAC Silver Crown Championship dirt cars and the 2nd Best Western Lincoln Welders 50 for the ARCA Lincoln Welders Truck Series. While the day dawned partly sunny storm clouds quickly moved in and as 16th qualifier Paul White completed his second time trial lap in his Silver Crown car, a thunderstorm hit the track drenching the grounds with a substantial amount of rain. Proceedings were delayed almost two and one half hours while the track crew turned in a herculean effort to restore the World’s Faastest One Mile Dirt Track to a raceable condition. The lineup was set on practice times as racing action began at around 2:45 p.m. CDT.
Due to a curfew the grounds were supposed to be vacated by 4:30 p.m. to allow the grandstand and grounds to be converted for the Joe Walsh concert.
The largest starting field in Bettenhausen and USAC Silver Crown history (for dirt tracks), 39 strong pushed off from the pit area onto the Springfield Mile trying to squeeze in 100 scheduled miles before the time limit expired. For the first time since 1978 an Illinois driver occupied the pole position as Olney’s Levi Jones, by virtue of a time of 30.316 (118.749), became the first Prairie State native to start at the front since Bubby Jones started on the pole in 1978. With Kyle Wissmiller of Saybrook alongside, the all Illinois front row was a first in the 73 year history of championship dirt car racing at the Illinois State Fair!
Jones quickly jumped from the pole at the start and was chased by his teammate, 19 year old Ricky Stenhouse of Olive Branch, Mississippi. On lap 3 trouble erupted in the second turn as Jon Stanbrough flipped and collected Chris Urish of Elkhart, Illinois, Mike Hess of Petersburg, Illinois and Dickie Gaines driving a car for home town owner Scott Long. The fuel cell in the Hess car split upon impact and a huge fire erupted, severely burning the Hess machine and thoroughly scorching the cars of Gaines and Urish, whose fuel cell may also have split in the wreck. Due to the safety devices built into the cars and the fire retardant uniforms and helmets of the drivers, no injuries were reported. The accident brought out the red flag and a delay of nearly 20 minutes ensued to clean up the accident scene.
On the restart Stenhouse began to seriously pressure Jones, but had to wait through two more caution periods, one for the stalled car of Vienna, Illinois driver Derek King, the other for the stalled car of Aaron Pierce, before Stenhouse was able to take the lead for good on lap 29. Jones blew a tire on lap 73 bringing out the final of the four cautions on the day that flew for 24 laps. Due to time constraints the race was slated to be finished at 75 laps but technically exceeded that distance as USAC rules dictated the last two laps must be run under the green flag and the caution period to removed the Jones car far exceed the 75 lap distance. Stenhouse was never headed and in the process became not only the youngest winner of a 100-mile championship dirt car race at Springfield, but the youngest driver ever to post a win in a national championship auto racing series at the Illinois State Fair, at 19 years, 10 months and 16 days. Rookie Billy Wease finished second, with defendng national champion Bud Kaeding third, 2001 Bettenhausen winner and 2001 national champ Paul White fourth and Shane Cottle fifth. Sixty two year old Johnny Parsons was sixth and in the process became the career leader n USAC Silver Crown Series starts at Springfield with 25.
Saturday marked the first time in 73 years that a championship dirt car race at Springfield was cut short due to weather, the 4th time that official time trials were not used to set the starting lineup, and just the 6th time that a red flag caused no official time of the race to be recorded.
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