Auto racing
BY RANDY OPPENHEIMER
Enquirer Contributor
LAWRENCEBURG, Ind
-
He may be the best race car driver in America. Many sports fans have
never
heard of him. Rich Vogler won the Hut 100 race for USAC midgets
last
night at the Lawrenceburg Speedway. Vogler, the 39-year old driver from
Glen Ellyn, Ill., has won the race eight times in the last 11years.
Every May he drives
at Indianapolis, before hundreds
of thousands,
at speeds over 200 mph.The rest of the year he competes at tracks like
Lawrenceburg, running at half the Indy speeds on tracks one-twelfth the
size. During the summer he often races four nights a week.
He's a
hired gun, flying around the
counrty in his
own plane, stepping into strange cars at strange tracks and winning.
Vogler
has more wins in USAC history than any other driver, having surpassed
A.J.
Foyt earlier this year.
He has
mastered both sides of the great
divide of
auto racing - dirt tracks and paved tracks. No other driver since Foyt
has done both so well.
Vogler
qualified fastest at Lawrenceburg
and started
from the pole position. Alongside was another Indy veteran, Johnny
Parsons.
Parsons passed him on the second lap, Sixty-six laps later Vogler
passed
him back, and went on for the win. "The
front
end of my car wanted to push up the track at the start of the race,"
said Vogler. "But I know this track. Moisture
just
seems to come out of the air as it gets colder at night and then the
track
starts to get slick. I waited and the track came to me."
Jeff Gordon, the 17-year-old
sensation from
Vallejo Calif., finished second. He was closing on Vogler at the end,
finishing
10 car lengths back. "I didn't know he was
coming," said Vogler. "There's no way to
get
a signal from your crew at this track, so I was just running easy and
making
sure I didn't make any mistakes. But, if he had gotton next to me, I
was
ready to go."
Russ Gamester finished third, and
Parsons had
slipped to fourth. "I picked the wrong
tire,"
said Parsons. "We went with a hard tire on the
right
rear, and Vogler and those other guys went with a softer tire. We were
good early,
but
the tire just broke down as the
race went
on."
The race was
moved to Lawrenceburg after being
rained
out two straight weeks at Lincoln Park Speedway.
1.
Rich Vogler; 2. Jeff Gordon;
3. Russ Gamester;
4. Johnny Parsons; 5. Kevin Olson; 6. John Heydenreich; 7. Steve
Gennetten;
8. Dean Billings; 9. Mike Streicher; 10. Terry Wente, 11. Roger
McClusky, Jr., 12 Ron Glidden, 13 Kurt Mayhew, 14 Kevin Doty, 15 Jerry
Zike, 16 Mares Stelfox, 17 Kenneth Nichols, 18 Gary Baugh, 19 Joe
Roush, 20 Ted Hines, 21 Brett Pool, 22 Dick Pole, 23-??
Fast Time Rich
Vogler - 13.11 seconds
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