UARA-Stars hope to continue strong start

 

By TIM SOUTHERS

FasTrack Editor

 

At the beginning of every season either race tracks or regional touring series, such as the United Auto Racing Association-Stars, often wonder what kind of participation they will have from competitors. Car counts, full-fields and fan counts often will determine whether the season will be a success or failure. Judging by the car count UARA enjoyed at its season opening race two weeks ago at Hickory Motor Speedway, this could be a breakout year for the relatively young touring series.

Dennis Queen was able to hold off Lee Tissot and win the season opener at Hickory as a total of 44 cars attempted to make the 28-car starting field. The car count was something that made UARA president Kerry Bodenhamer very happy.

“We were very happy to see that many cars at Hickory the other week,” said Bodenhamer. “We had a great race and it was good to see a strong number of quality young drivers competing in our series. We have worked hard over the past couple of years to build this series and we still are working hard to make it better.”

This weekend the series returns to action at Concord Motorsport Park with the running of the Fairborn Equipment 150. While Bodenhamer expects another good car count this weekend he also expects things to go a little smoother during the race day. Technical issues with a new scoring system and several new staff members forced the series to run behind schedule, something that Bodenhamer has addressed heading into this weekend.

“We want to apologize to everyone who came out to Hickory,” said Bodenhamer. “We have addressed several issues and made adjustments to our schedule so we will not have those issues again. The basic principle was we tried to squeeze a schedule that usually would have been almost a day and half long into about three-quarters of a day and you can’t do that and stay on time.”

One of those issues was a new electronic scoring system that was implemented at the first race that UARA feels is ready.

“When we purchased this new system to improve our scoring process we knew it would take time to get it up and going and we have it ready to go and that will save us time this weekend,” added Bodenhamer.

Another noticeable difference is the amount of sponsorship involvement in the series this season versus years past. Something Bodenhamer feels will only help the series in the future.

“Any type of racing today costs a lot of money,” said Bodenhamer. “We are happy that we now have sponsors noticing us and realizing we are here to stay and they are now wanting to get more involved and that can only help our series and competitors. We are very grateful.”

While this weekend should be an action-packed race there will be another variable in the picture when the cars get to CMP. CMP recently completed some work to the track