Ken de la Bastide: Street Stocks set to invade Anderson Speedway
Jun. 21—Over the past few years, some of the most competitive races at Anderson Speedway has been the annual visits of the CRA Street Stocks.
Along with the Lucas Oil Little 500, the Greg Hubler Automotive Group Redbud 400 and the non-wing sprint car events, the Street Stocks always provide memorable events.
The Street Stock division has provided lots of side-by-side racing action among the competitors, and the outcome of the races are not normally determined until the closing laps.
This weekend the high banked quarter-mile oval will play host to the first of two 150-lap events. As of Tuesday, there are 25 teams entered.
Kentucky driver Brett Hudson has been a dominating factor in the 150- and 200-lap events at Anderson Speedway, finding his way to victory lane in both 2020 and 2021.
But local drivers like Jason Atkinson, Josh Poore and Andrew Teepe have always been in contention for victories when the division visits Anderson.
This weekend marks the fourth race for the division in 2022, and three drivers have visited victory lane.
Atkinson won at Shadybowl Speedway in Ohio, Poore scored a win earlier this year at Anderson and Teepe is the most recent winner at Mount Lawn Speedway.
Currently three drivers are tied for the points lead with rookie campaigners Blaine Akin and Dalton Conner tied with Atkinson.
Anderson driver Dawson Phillips, the 2021 rookie of the year, is only four points back.
Other top competitors expected this weekend include Ryan Amonett, James Kirby III, Frankie Oakes, Calvin Parham and Chuck Barnes Jr.
Qualifying will be critical, but an even bigger factor will be the inversion that sets the starting field.
As always, the CRA Street Stocks deliver an entertaining and exciting race at Anderson.
OTHER RACING NEWS
Anyone who follows super late model racing in this country knows the name of Georgia driver Bubba Pollard.
Pollard is one of the best when it comes to super late model racing, and last weekend he probably gained a lot of new fans with his second-place finish at the SRX race at Five Flags Speedway.
It appears NASCAR is going to stage a street course race next year in the Windy City.
Reports are an agreement is close to being reached for a street race in Chicago.
The unfortunate part of the announcement is some current race will be removed from the Cup schedule.
It would be a mistake for NASCAR to remove the race at Road America in Wisconsin for the Chicago race.
I would vote to remove one of the races at Kansas or Las Vegas instead of the true road course event at Road America.
Follow Ken de la Bastide on Twitter @KendelaBastide, or call 765-640-4863.
