Story By: GARY HEEMAN / LERNERVILLE SPEEDWAY – SARVER, PA – Fab4 Racing Revved UP with Marburger Farm Dairy returns to The Action Track on Friday, presented by Diehl Automotive.
The Peoples Natural Gas Sprint Cars, Precise Racing Products Late Models, Diehl Automotive Big Block Modifieds and the Millerstown Pic-A-Part Pro Stocks will all be in action as the points battles become more intense with the regular season moving into its middle portion.
Diehl Automotive will have some cars on hand fresh from the showroom for fans to look over and also on Friday night, the annual Ride for Kids event will be taking place as well with raffles and door prizes featuring driver merchandise and memorabilia. Headed by former Big Block Modified driver Chris Rudolph, the event helps to raise money for the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation.
Coming into Friday night, AJ Flick has a relatively firm grip of the standings in Peoples Natural Gas Sprint Car standings and currently rides a three race winning streak, a streak that has been on hiatus following a rainout on Championship night as well as two other scheduled off nights. Flick has chalked up four feature wins at The Action Track thus far in six races while Dan Kuriger and Brandon Spithaler stopped Flick on back to back weeks back in May for the only other feature wins from anyone not named Flick. In recent area action, weekly competitor Darin Gallagher broke into the win column at Michigan’s Butler Motor Speedway on June 24. Gallagher, who currently sits 44 points behind Flick in the standings to date, will be looking to use the momentum to take his elusive first victory at The Action Track on Friday night.
Tyler Dietz currently maintains a 12 point lead over former track champion Michael Norris and has been consistently good week in and week out. And, sometimes better than good as evidenced by his feature win in the last appearance by the Precise Racing Products Late Models on June 8. Though the weekly warriors of the division haven’t battled exclusively for nearly a month, the home team definitely delivered the goods at the 17th annual Firecracker 100 with Norris taking a runner-up finish during preliminary event action. And, on the final Firecracker night, a whopping nine weekly drivers earned their way into the 100 lap event as Norris, Tyler Dietz, Ken Schaltenbrand, Levi Yetter, Garvin Jr., Logan Zarin, Alex Ferree, Colton Flinner and Gary Lyle all made the show. Norris and Schaltenbrand both recorded top 10 finishes in the process in one of the best local showings in the history of the event. Norris has two wins on the season thus far with Dietz, 2022 champion John Garvin Jr and an invading Gregg Satterlee have accounted for the divisional wins thus far in 2023.
In Diehl Automotive Big Block Modified action, Garrett Krummert took his second feature win of the season last Friday night, scratching out a hard fought victory over teammate Will Thomas to become the only driver in the division to accumulate more than one feature victory so far this year. The effort gave him just three points to add to his one point cushion over Rex King Jr. coming into the night though as the two former champions continue to engage in what appears to be a battle to the final lap on Championship Night at this time. Collecting feature wins so far this year have been King Jr., Jeremiah Shingledecker, with invading wins from Mat Williamson and Erick Rudolph.
Tyler Dietz currently stands on top of both Millerstown Pic-A-Part Pro Stock point standings and on the winner’s list and by very comfortable margins at that. Dietz brings a 32 point lead into Friday night over Cody Koteles and like Flick in the Peoples Sprints, has a nearly unheard of winning percentage of .667 with the Pro Stocks. Dietz has shown a flair for the dramatic though, as all of his wins have seen him driving in some hard fought, door to door battles to nearly the last lap. Last Friday night Dietz came out on top from a heavyweight battle between himself and Chris Schneider for the win in thrilling fashion to the delight of the crowd on hand. Christian Schneider and Jake Dietz own the other two feature wins thus far this season.
Pits will open at 4 PM on Friday with grandstands opening at 5 PM and racing set to begin at 7:30 PM. General admission is $18 while children 10 and under will be admitted free as always. Pit passes will be available for $30. The entire night of racing action will be streamed live on the Dirt.tv Network which is available via monthly ($24.99) or annual subscription ($149.99) and features all the racing at Lernerville Speedway plus archives and all other content which includes a variety of events from across the region including Rodeo, Motocross, Demolition Derbies, racing action from various speedways and much more.