The racing season at Industry Speedway moves into the home stretch at 7 p.m. Wednesday when the stars of Speedway Motorcycle racing assemble for round 15 of the 20-race season.
An off-road vehicle display and driving demonstration will accompany the motorcycle action on the 150-yard dirt oval track inside The Grand arena at the Industry Hills Expo Center.
Young First Division star Ricky Wells, 17, of Yorba Linda, will be trying for his third straight main event win and fourth overall. Wells and Charlie Venegas of San Bernardino are the only multiple winners at the track this season.
Wells, who last weekend edged Shawn McConnell for the track championship at Victorville, has won three of the past four races. Venegas, the all-time leader in main event wins at Industry Speedway, opened the season by capturing eight of the first nine races.
Venegas, however, has failed to qualify for the main event in his two most recent races at the best speedway venue in America. He was derailed by mechanical problems that forced him onto a borrowed motorcycle July 16 and struggled through a subpar night Aug. 6 because of a “soft” motor. In between, Venegas was concentrating on the opening of his new speedway track – Golden Gate Speedway in Vallejo.
There was no main event last week. It was cancelled after an accident early in the Sidecar main event left driver Scott Driggers hospitalized with a fractured pelvis, broken femur and internal bleeding and his nephew Sean, the swinger, with a badly-broken nose, dislocated hip and possibly fractured eye socket.
Scott Driggers, 48, of Lake Forest remains in the Intensive Care Unit at Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center, where he and Sean were transported following the accident, and during Wednesday’s racing program donations will be welcome to help with the family’s medical expenses.
In addition to the usual, spirited racing action, off-road racers Casey Currie and Chuck Dempsey will be on hand to display the vehicles they drive in the Championship Off-Road Racing (CORR) series and demonstrate their technique on a short track that incorporates the speedway infield.
Currie, of Anaheim, drives the Bully Dog Nissan truck that is 12th in the CORR Pro Lite standings and Dempsey, of Oak Hills, has his Nissan 16th in the standings. The series makes its third visit of the season to the Pomona Fairplex Saturday and Sunday.
Entrance gates at The Grand open at 5:30 p.m. and racing gets under way at 7 p.m. Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for seniors, students and military, and $5 for children 6-13.
