Team Mopar drivers among top threats as Mopar Midget National Championship Series preps for Knoxville
The United States Auto Club (USAC) and the teams of the organization's Mopar Midget National Championship Series are gearing up for one of the tour's biggest weekends, set for June 20-21 at the Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway. While the number of Mopar-powered entries at Knoxville will not be known until race time, it seems clear that three cars in particular, from two separate Mopar teams, will be watched most closely: the Kasey Kahne Racing machines driven by Brad Sweet and Brady Bacon -- numbered 49 and 99, respectively -- and the Wilke-Pak no. 11 steered by Jerry Coons Jr.
Of those three drivers, Coons has seen both the most experience and the most success at Knoxville. The popular Arizona racer has registered two victories at Knoxville, both of them aboard Midgets. His most recent win came in June of 2006, when he topped the Friday-night feature while driving for the Wilke family, a decades-old fixture on the Midget scene. Coons has also raced at Knoxville aboard USAC Silver Crown cars.
For Bacon, Knoxville was the scene of one of his greatest coming-of-age weekends. He finished second on both evenings of the Iowa twin bill in 2006. It was performances like that one which brought Bacon to the attention of USAC's top-tier Midget teams, and ultimately helped lead to his hiring at Kasey Kahne Racing, for which the Oklahoma teenager now steers Mopar-powered Sprint Cars as well as Midgets. Sweet's "seat time" at Knoxville is limited to a single start in a winged 360 Sprint Car, but his first season with Kasey Kahne Racing has been notable for the speed with which the young Californian has adapted to new tracks and situations. Though relatively new to Midgets, Sweet has historically shined on fast dirt tracks, a category into which the fabled Knoxville Raceway fits very neatly.
The Friday portion of the Knoxville program is devoted to the Pepsi-sponsored "King Doodlebug Midget Classic," a nostalgic nod back to the days when Midgets were often affectionately referred to as "doodlebugs." The Saturday-night event is titled the "Knoxville Midget Nationals."
The 2008 Mopar Midget National Championship will feature a 30-event schedule at tracks across the country. The series will visit ten states, stopping at such famed tracks as Ohio's Eldora Speedway, Iowa's Knoxville Raceway, O'Reilly Raceway Park at Indianapolis, and the Belleville High Banks in Kansas. The 2008 Mopar Midget National Champion will be crowned at the season-ending "Turkey Night" event in November in Irwindale, California. For more info on the USAC Mopar Midget National Championship, visit usacracing.com.