LITTLE ROCK — Rain cut the racing short at Little Rock’s I-30 Speedway on Thursday night, but there was plenty to make up for it Friday night.
During Thursday’s opening night of the 24th annual Comp Cams Short Track Nationals, rain stopped the racing about halfway through the card.
As a result, Friday’s card also included the remainder of Thursday’s preliminaries.
After the completion of the Thursday prelim feature and Friday’s late qualifying feature, most of the field was set for tonight’s main event, which will pay $15,000 to win and $2,400 to start.
A total of 51 sprint car teams competed Thursday night, with around 55 teams scheduled to hit the track Friday night. That would leave around 100 teams left to compete for the remaining feature spots tonight.
On Thursday, heat race winners were 2002 winner Paul McMahan of Hendersonville, Tenn., Seth Bergman of Snohomish, Wash., Mason Moore of Princeton, Calif .,Shane Stewart of Bixby, Okla., Ray Allen Kulhanek of Conroe, Texas, and Matt Covington of Glenpool, Okla.
Stewart and Covington won qualifiers before the rain hit.
Thursday’s event also was stopped earlier in the evening by rain. But after a 1 1/2-hour delay, carsreturned to the track.
Miranda Arnold of Sedalia, Mo., flipped her sprinter in the first heat race. Then in the second qualifying race, Vilonia’s Tyler Brown tumbled over the turnthree embankment, flipping five or six times. Neither driver was injured.
Sports, Pages 27 on 10/29/2011