Let's begin with a little rant. ....

Before the season even started, the threat of 2 area dirt tracks running on Saturday night had many rumors and ugly predictions flying. Personally, I had high hopes for Hilltop not just holding their own, but continuing to grow stronger. Sure it's been no cake walk and there's still plenty of the 2014 season left to go, but early indications are that treating racers and fans with respect and honesty really is the way to go. I won't go into all of the dirty details at this time but many of you already know about certain drivers and others being "rewarded" for their ummmmm "support" at the other place. Drivers flat out lying about track conditions at Hilltop have been exposed by online videos here and elsewhere too but that doesn't stop the ugly talk. Come on folks, when facts prove you to be full of shit, it kinda makes ya look silly after a while. While we're talking about making yourself look like an asshole, let's look at the latest brilliant move by that other Saturday night track. Within 24 hours of Hilltop Speedway announcing a big Sprint car show on a weekend that the other track wasn't running them, that other track decided they would now add Sprints to their show too. Gee, that doesn't seem too obvious as a dig at the competition does it? The trouble is that many of us have seen this bullshit before and it may have worked against a weaker track with less than motivated owners, but this isn't Lakeville this time folks. Buck and the entire staff, along with the weekly racers and fans, have worked very hard to improve Hilltop in any way they can, and they're damn sure not gonna roll over now. This isn't meant to start a pissing match between 2 race tracks, but I felt it was beyond time to expose some of the dirty games being played by one track against another. Dammit, this area can't afford any track deliberately working against another track again. It's time to work together and promote racing at ALL area tracks before we end up killing our favorite sport all together. If you agree, don't hesitate to contact the tracks and tell them that you want to see cooperation, not pissing matches. Just think how strong each track could be if they worked this hard to work together. The racers and fans are smart enough to see what's really going on and would really appreciate an honest effort to help each other in order to help them all.

Now to the racing action on Saturday night. The night was kicked off with the fans being turned loose in the pits to meet their favorite drivers and get some autographs and other goodies. It's always great to see the youngsters that will hopefully take to the track some day getting to meet their heros. The drivers also always do their best to return the support they get weekly from their loyal fans. A really nice twist is seeing the young drivers such as the Mini Wedge pilots signing autographs and playing the roll of hero to other kids and even many adults. How cool is that?

For the 4th show in a row, the track crew at Hilltop provided another great racing surface for the 122 cars in 8 divisions this week. They'd be sure to use every inch of it all night long too. When you think of using all of the track surface, the first name that comes to mind has got to be George Lee. In the feature he made rare use of the bottom groove to take the lead and then set out to clean off the guardrails the rest of the race. There was no catching this crazy bastard this week, although Duncan sure gave it all he had. In the final laps Mike Basich made great use of the bottom groove to sneak into second. A few more laps may have helped him reel in Lee, but then ya gotta get around him. That's no easy task but we"ll see what Basich and others have in mind next week.