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Show Over One Thousand View Drag Races Over a thousand spectators specta-tors gathered at the old airport drag strip Sunday to watch the NHRA sanctioned sanc-tioned races, sponsored by the Grand Valley Racing Association. Dragsters from Grand Junction, Cortez and Montrose, Mon-trose, Colorado, and from Price, plus six local sportsters, sports-ters, provided the 33 competing com-peting cars. Local racers making a good showing were Kay Tangren, Ben Bullock, Burns Lyman, Phil Maxwell, James Bailey Bail-ey and Bob Scott. Top eliminator was the Big Dodge of Eisenhauer Motors, Grand Junction, driven by M. G. Matthus. The same car and driver captured the Street Eliminator Elimin-ator honors during the afternoon. Junior Stock Eliminator was Dennis Salzatte, of Price, driving a self built-up built-up Chevrolet. D. L. Russell, of Grand Junciont, in his "Red Baron," Bar-on," was Competition Eliminator. El-iminator. Best time of the day was turned in by Whitey Shnff-ner, Shnff-ner, of Grand Junction, who recorded 115.38 miles per hour in 11.35 seconds. Shaffner's day was mixed witji good sportsmanship and tough luck, which are traditional in the "drags.'' He loaned his extra clutch to another competitor then blew his own to put him out of the running. Several of the dragsters and their families remained remain-ed overnight in Moab. Local Lo-cal officials estimated that over $1000 was spent in the city for rooms, meals and gas by the dragsters over the weekend. The Grand Valley Racing Rac-ing Association is still trying try-ing to perfect title to the drag strip, which through intracacies of previous legal le-gal agreements, has reverted re-verted to BIJI control. The young men involved in the racing activities are developing into excellent mechanics through their work with their dragsters, and the races are a self-sustained self-sustained enterprise, officials offi-cials note. They have prevailed pre-vailed upon the Grand county Commission to obtain ob-tain title to the abandoned air strip so it may become be-come a permanent drag site. |