Racin' With Russ
By Russell Schmidt

Sorenson Wins Demo-Derby 250 at Gateway
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

From the outset, it was a wreckfest. There were cars in the wall and into each other many times throughout the Saturday night Busch race in Illinois at Gateway International Raceway.

Reed Sorensen hadn’t won a Busch race since this particular event exactly two years ago. The young Ganassi driver led the most laps and passed strong leaders Carl Edwards, Todd Bodine, Scott Wimmer among others to go on and claim his third career win.

Points leader Edwards led laps as well, but fought an ill-handling car for most of the night, not to mention re-arranging the sheet metal on his car on more than one occasion.

I have to laugh at the millions of dollars spent on aero improvements to the cars, yet Edwards’ car ran well enough to finish sixth despite hardly a straight panel on the car at the finish.

Eighteen cars for one reason or another, mostly wreck damage, did not finish the race.

The Toyotas ran strong with three finishing among the top ten. Can a first win be close? You bet.

Others in the top five in this one included Wimmer, David Reutimann, Jason Leffler and David Regan.

With the Cup teams off this week, there would be plenty of strategizing for the final 17-week stretch of competition. Yes, I said 17 weeks! That is quite a grind in any sport, let along one that requires four to five days a week of travel and work for crews and drivers.

Many feel the current top 12 in the Chase will remain there. I concur. What do you think? Drop me a line.

Open Wheel News - Scott Dixon took his third consecutive win in a Indy Racing League event, this time at the beautiful Mid-Ohio roadcourse. The Ganassi driver took the lead from polesitter Helio Castroneves in yet another strong show of talent from the English driver.

Capping off the top five in this one were the cars of Dario Franchitti, Castroneves, Tony Kanaan and a career best fifth for Danica Patrick.

Over in Edmonton, Canada, Sebastien Bourdais won yet another race among the Champ car set with many feeling the French driver will extend his Champ Car titles to a fourth later this year. He really needs to move over to F-1. There’s nothing left in the states for him to prove.

Speaking of Formula One, they had quite a mess in the GP of Germany on Sunday. The race started dry, only to have the skies open up within the first few laps, setting off a string of cars flying off the racetrack.

The weekend began with rookie phenom Lewis Hamilton having a rather large shunt (read accident) during qualifying, leaving the young star to take a ride to the hospital, yet cleared for race day.

He started 10th, was caught up in the rain, sliding off the track, yet managed to climb back to a very respectable ninth place finish.

Out front, it was Ferrari driver Felipe Massa in control until succumbing to a pass by reigning champion Fernando Alonso. The Spanish driver went on to claim his third win of ‘07 and more importantly climbed within two points of the overall points lead. Eight seconds back at the line was Massa with Mark Webber more than a minute in arrears.

From Rumorville - Seems that the Silly Season of driver swaps knows no boundaries. Enter Ginn Racing. They came in like gangbusters, hiring the likes of Mark Martin to turn things around in the No. 01 Army car. Exit Joe Nemechek, well, at least not until last week. He drove the No. 13 sometimes with a sponsor, sometimes without and now, not at all.

After a half season of searching for the proverbial almighty dollar, Ginn has closed the doors on the No. 13 and yanked out both veteran drivers Sterling Marlin and Nemechek in favor of Regan Smith and Aric Almirola. Well….let’s see…take out two drivers with an average age of 47 that are heading down the road to retirement in favor of two talented and marketable drivers whose ages don’t even add up to 47! Any questions?

Schrader back to racing? Yes, but not in the Woods Brothers No. 21, rather a one off deal back with old friends at BAM Racing (No.49) for this week’s Brickyard 400, then Mike Bliss will return full-time after leaving the team about a month ago. Silly, huh?

On the local level, Dustin Rumley of McLeansville, NC surprised the fans and his fellow racers by taking his first checkers in Late Model competition at Ace Speedway on Friday night. You see this rookie driver is only 17 years old and won the race starting from eighth place, defeating many of the strongest runners such as Robert Turner and Scotty Warren. Rodney Cook finished second with Todd Massey third.

Mebane driver and eleven time winner Speedy Faucette sat out this race, still working on severe damage suffered from last week's feature.

Did you know? How many wins veteran drivers Marlin and Nemechek have to work with on their resumes while looking for work? Ten for Marlin and four for Nemechek is the correct answer with 31 years of competition for Marlin, his most notable wins (2) at the Daytona 500.

That’s it for this week. Next week’s RWR will review the Brickyard 400 from Indy, the Busch and truck races from nearby O'Reilly Raceway Park and more racing news from around the globe. Don’t miss the 400 as this is a very important race, with a lot of money and prestige on the line. Only the Daytona 500 pays more.