Thru Noggles Goggles .::. October 18th

Thru Noggles Goggles — 18 October 2012

Former SCIRA and USAC sprint car driver Butch Wilkerson has agreed to be the auctioneer at our October 27th Race Chaser luncheon at Winchester Speedway where he will work his magic to get top dollar for a few sets of Crucean-Mahoney pictures on the career of Jeff Bloom, seriously burned in a Must See winged sprint car crash nearly two months ago. The still-recovering Bloom has undergone several treatments for his 2nd & 3rd degree burns over 15% of his body. Please continue to pray for his recovery and for strength for both Jeff and wife Linda. This luncheon is shaping up to be a big event with over 50 folks signed up at $20 each. (Professional drivers’ registration charges will be waved.) To confirm your registration, a note was sent this morning to each of you who have RSVP’d. You have 2 days remaining. If you were not notified this morning, or don’t RSVP by Saturday, or if you just show up on October 27th unannounced, then your cost will be $40. Sorry, but with limited space and the fact that the Speedway needs to have an accurate count to properly host our meals, this has to be done. Your understanding is appreciated. It was agreed by all involved that any money beyond the cost of our meals and other expenses will go to the USAC Benevolent Fund. Hope to see you there. Once again, the time schedule will be 10am for the drive-around and 12 noon sharp for the luncheon. It will need to get under way promptly due to our surprise guest’s arrival and some time to visit with that person, then have the Jeff Bloom auction of pictures, then enjoy our Driver Round Table Discussion. Needless to say, the “Jeff & Linda Bloom Burn Recovery Fund” & the “USAC Benevolent Fund” monies will be kept separately and sent to them accordingly.

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With the recent loss of Altamont and Ascot, both in CA, Manzanita in AZ, and a few others in the southwest, this report from the “National Speed Sport News” comes as a welcome surprise:

Right-click here to download pictures. To help protect your privacy, Outlook prevented automatic download of this picture from the Internet.<br />

California racing fans will have a new venue to attend auto races next season.

Tony and Carol Noceti, who promote stock car racing at the asphalt Stockton 99 Speedway and its kart track, have reached an agreement — and construction has already begun — to build a three-eighths-mile dirt track inside of the one-mile horse racing oval at the San Joaquin County Fairgrounds. They hope to hold as many as 10 events at the The New Stockton 99 Dirt Track annually with a goal of opening in April.

“We’re anxious to get going and I think this is a wonderful opportunity to bring big-time races to the fans in Stockton,” Tony Noceti told The Record.

Noceti has already begun negotiating with officials from the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series in hopes of bringing that series to the track.

Construction began in early October and Noceti said it will be complete in less than a month and cost approximately $250,000. Noceti sank approximately $1 million into Stockton 99 Speedway since reaching an agreement with its owners, Bob Hunefeld and Ken Clapp, to reopen the facility in 2009. “It takes hard work. But I’m a farmer, I move dirt,” Nocetti told The Record. “That’s what I do for a living.”

One of the drawbacks is that the track does not have lights, so any events would take place during the daytime.

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Caution lights are suddenly flashing for racing star Danica Patrick’s lucrative gig with GoDaddy. The advertising future of GoDaddy’s go to girl for Super Bowl commercials appears to be in limbo with GoDaddy today planning to announce the hiring of a new ad agency, Deutsch, which will have full freedom to drop the racing star from the Web domain naming company’s Super Bowl spots – 10 – more than any other celebrity, including Michael Jordan, Michael Jackson, and Cindy Crawford. But she has not appeared in a GoDaddy spot in months, and the company says it has no plans to feature her in any commercials through the end of 2012.

Patrick’s Q score, which tracks likeability, has ben heading south, falling from 29 in 2010, to 19 in 2012. “It raises a warning signal to evaluate the strength of her emotional connection with consumers,” said Henry Schafer, executive vice president at the Q scores Co.

******************************************************************** Nine IndyCar Series regulars are scheduled to compete this weekend in a pair of 190-mile V8 Supercar races at the Gold Coast 600 in Surfers Paradise, Australia: Sebastien Bourdais, Will Power, Ryan Briscoe, Simon Pagenaud, Justin Wilson, Mike Conway, Graham Rahal, Marco Andretti and James Hinchcliffe. Bourdais won the Dan Wheldon Memorial Trophy, awarded to the best-performing international racer, at last year’s event.

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Memorable Quote: “I’ve traveled all over the world, and every place I go, the one thing everyone wants to talk about is Indy, Indy, Indy. What I tell ‘em is, yeah. you got it right – there just isn’t anything in the world like the Indianapolis 500.” A. J. Foyt