XENIA — More than 100 kids went home happy, after Sunday’s Gem City Auto Racing Kid’s Day festivities at Kil-Kare Raceway.
Each child received a raffle ticket as they entered the race track, and a prize raffle earned each one a gift to head home with after the day’s fun. Some kids went home with brand-new bicycles.
Drivers from the Compact and Street Stock classes chauffeured kids on a slow guided tour of the Kil-Kare Raceway oval. Kids piled into the front passenger seat, if a race car had one. Others sat where the rear window would normally be on a passenger car, but since glass windows are not allowed in race cars the kids got a great view of the facility from atop the back seat.
Woody’s Radiator business, located just west of the track on 1170 Dayton-Xenia Road, provided wagon rides for the kids and their families. Woody estimated he provided rides to more than 100 people. The tractor was seen taking fans over the adjoining Kil-Kare Dragway strip, too.
When all the kids stuff was through, families got to enjoy four racing classes of Gem City Auto Racing series entertainment.
Columbus’s Phil Gussler Jr. claimed the 15-lap Street Stock feature win by just over two seconds over fellow Columbusite Jacob Muncy in the day’s first feature event.
In the 35-lap Modified feature race, Kettering’s Jamie Sites fought off class points leader Jack Jones of Beavercreek to claim a 1.443-second win. Sites now has a division-best four feature wins this season.
It had been seven years since Germantown racing veteran Joe Hill had won a feature event. But he stepped into his son Levi’s bright-blue No. 70 compact division racer and earned a narrow win over Riverside points leader Bo Hoelscher by 0.144 seconds in the 20-lap race. Hoelscher showed a lot of class by stopping behind Hill in Victory Lane and congratulating the former Late Model veteran on a terrific race win.
Then in the 40-lap GCAR Late Model race, another Kettering driver — former Kil-Kare track champion Cody Robinson — ended his day in Victory Lane. Robinson fought off Late Model points leader Drew Charleson of New Bremen to earn his first feature win of the 2017 Gem City Auto Racing series season.
Just two weekends of GCAR series stock car racing remain on the 2017 schedule. The series returns to Kil-Kare on Sunday Aug. 27 for a regular afternoon schedule of Late Model, Modified, Street Stock and Compact class racing. The inaugural GCAR season will wind up on Sunday Sept. 24 with the Lee Raymond 100 event, which will include the four classes of racing.
