Topless Night at South Buxton Raceway
They’re going topless on Saturday night at South Buxton Raceway.
Keep your shirts on … Brad Authier, Brad McLeod, Shawn Jones, Randy McKinlay and the rest of drivers won’t be taking off their fire suit tops.
But the Topless Sprints are making their South Buxton debut with the first Can-Am Championship, featuring three wingless sprint sanctioning series.
The Ontario Topless Sprints are hosting the first international championship series, which will include the Buckeye Outlaws Sprint Series, from Ohio, and the Michigan Traditional Sprints.
“We’re hoping to have about 20 cars,” said OTS president Ken Bayliss, a former South Ontario Sprints driver and long-time official.
The Buckeye Outlaws race about three times a month throughout Ohio, Indiana and Pennsylvania while the MTS race regularly on tracks throughout Michigan.
The Michigan Traditional Sprints, in its seventh season, were scheduled to race at South Buxton in 2008 but were rained out.
The OTS made its debut last August at Humberstone Speedway in Port Colborne, where Robbie Shuttleworth, of Geneva N.Y was the inaugural series winner.
The first leg of the Can-Am championship is Friday at Humberstone before the cars head south for Saturday’s show at South Buxton.
Also on Saturday night’s program will be the fourth Cory Schives memorial race for the Tirecraft Comp 4s.
Blenheim’s Shawn Jones is the defending race winner, which is held in honour his best friend Schives, who died three days after his 17th birthday in June, 2009, after a long battle with cancer.
The two grew up together in Blenheim and Schives worked on Jones’ pit crew when he started racing in 2008.
Today, Cory’s brother Jeff – who is now 17 – works on the crews for both Shawn and his 14-year-old brother.
Jones, 20, has won five straight features heading into Saturday night and overtook Cottam’s Denis DeSerrano for the points lead.
Trevor sits third in points, 71 points behind big brother.
Brad Authier is also riding a hot streak as the veteran Chatham driver was won four straight features in the Glencoe Auto Recyclers UMP Late Models. He moved into third place in the standings, 113 points behind the leader Gregg Haskell, also from Chatham.
Shrewsbury’s Jim Dale Jr. leads the Schinkels’ Gourmet Meats UMP Modified standings by 27 points over Leamington’s Joel Dick. Dale Jr. had a 47-point lead going into last week but suffered a DNF in the feature.
Merlin’s Eren Vanderiviere also had a DNF in last week’s Windride Transportation Sport Stocks feture but still leads Chatham’s Jason Fox by a comfortable 82-point margin.
Both Dale Jr. and Vanderiviere had won three straight features before their DNFs.
The gates open at 5 p.m. and racing starts at 7 p.m.