ACTion News - February 27, 2008


-by Justin St. Louis

A major transition is happening at Barre, VT's Thunder Road for 2008; as
said in a recent story on the track's
website, www.thunderroadspeedbowl.com, solid groups of three or four drivers
will leave their 2007 racing
divisions and make jumps to the next level of competition.  NAPA Tiger
Sportsman drivers Nick Sweet and Matt
White, along with White Mountain Motorsports Park veteran and former Thunder
Road Champion Tyler Cahoon, will move
to full-time American-Canadian Tour/Thunder Road Late Model racing this
year.  As they head for the upper-tier
division, three Allen Lumber Street Stock drivers, Champion Bobby Therrien,
and race winners Josh Demers and Mike
Ziter, fill the space opened by Sweet and White.  They will be joined by
another White Mountain runner, Cody
Blake, who at 15 years old last year, was a three-time winner in Strictly
Stock racing at the New Hampshire 1/4-
mile.  With Therrien, Demers, and Ziter gone from the Street Stocks, that
leaves room for Power Shift Online
Junkyard Warrior standouts Lenny Sanborn, David Whitcomb, and Champion
Bunker Hodgdon to move up.  And taking
their places in the Warriors will be newcomers that include early entrants
Justin Hathaway, Lance Donald, and
Merrill Bashaw, Jr.

"Drivers change divisions every year, but I can't remember an off-season
that has seen this many solid racers move
from one division to the next and have the transition be so evenly
distributed among the four groups," said
Thunder Road promoter and ACT President Tom Curley.  "It's positive and
encouraging that our weekly racers are
getting the experience and confidence they need to be competitive at a
higher level.  I don't know of any other
track or series that is enjoying the growth we're seeing this year,
especially with the high quality of the
drivers and equipment that will be making the 'big jump.'  It's a very
exciting time for us."

***

Speaking of newcomers, ACT fans should get used to seeing the name Urlin
again.  Ontario youngster Jonathan "J.W."
Urlin, son of 1989 ACT Champion Russ Urlin, will pilot Ron Hohl's Shear
Metal Products #9ON car formerly driven by
Robbie Thompson.  Jonathan Urlin, 21, has filed full-season entries for both
the ACT Late Model Tour and the Série
ACT Castrol.

While Russ Urlin may be familiar to long-time ACT fans, Jonathan Urlin might
be as unfamiliar to them as he is to
stock car racing.  The second-generation driver has been behind the wheel
for a long time, but his experience up
until last year was entirely open-wheel.  In fact, Urlin raced a season in
the IRL Indy Pro Series, earning top-
five and top-ten finishes at tracks like Homestead-Miami, Phoenix, Kansas,
Pikes Peak, and the mecca of
motorsports, Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  He ran his first season of
full-fendered racing last year at Delaware
Speedway in his native Ontario, with added events at Flamboro, Sauble Beach,
Kawartha, Holland, NY, and Lake Erie
Speedway in Pennsylvania.

"Last season went pretty well after the halfway point.  The problem in the
beginning of the year was that I had
never raced with fenders before, and I was way too excited to use them,"
Urlin joked.  "We had a pretty tough time
early on, but we really got going and even won a couple of races.  I'm
looking forward to racing with ACT, and
Burt and Mike McColl (of McColl Racing Chassis) have been a huge help to me.
Burt will be our engineer for the
season, and he needs an inexperienced driver like me who can tell him what
the car is doing, but doesn't know how
to fix it.  That's when he's at his best, fixing chassis problems, and it's
going to be a lot of fun working with
him this summer."

Urlin said he's glad to have raced a full season at Delaware in order to get
ready for his ACT debut.

"The local Late Model drivers say that if you can win at Delaware, you can
win anywhere in Ontario, so that gives
us some confidence," Urlin said.  "I've raced Kawartha and I really like it,
it's more like the oval racing I did
with the open-wheel cars, if you can really compare the two.  But I'm
looking forward to seeing how Thunder Road
compares to a place like Indy, that should be fun."

***

Among the latest full-season entrants for the ACT Late Model Tour is Charlie
Smith, long-time member of the father-
son team of Dennis and Trampas Demers.  Smith will carry points in the ACT
Owners Championship standings for the
#85 car, which will be piloted by both Demers drivers during the Tour
season.  Both Dennis and Trampas were
Thursday night feature winners at Thunder Road last year.

***

Did you know.?

-Combining the ten current ACT/Thunder Road drivers mentioned in the opening
paragraphs of this week's ACTion News
column, 20 feature victories were earned by the group in 2007 alone.  All
told, they have at least 48 wins, and no
less than four championships and six rookie titles between them.  We'll see
if the three inexperienced Warrior
racers can help add to that tally this season!

-Russ Urlin's 1989 ACT Pro Stock Tour Championship season was one of utter
domination.  In 21 events, he won seven
times (on seven different tracks), never finished worse than seventh in a
race, and completed all but one of the
3,297 laps run that season.  He set records (for the time) by winning over
$114,000 that season, and by clinching
the championship with three races remaining on the schedule.  He was also
the first Canadian driver to win the ACT
title.

-The Demers gang combined for 23 "weekly" starts at Thunder Road in 2007
with a pair of victories coming back home
to Shelburne, VT.  While Trampas had a luckless season that saw him get
collected in no fewer than three major
pileups, he still finished in the Top 10 in half of his 14 starts and ranked
11th after winning the
Fisher/Federated Auto Parts season finale.  Papa Dennis took the month of
August off, but still managed to place
22nd in points with a win on Ferguson Waterworks Night in June.

Your feedback is always welcome at media@acttour.com!