Sleepy Tripp midget re-creation

at Turkey Night

Photo by the author

    

As part of the festivities at the 79^th annual ‘Turkey Night Grand Prix’ which honored Gary Zarounian and Ron “Sleepy” Tripp was this re-creation of the famous Zarounian Edmunds midget on display on the Ventura Raceway midway.

Photo by the author

This car is a recreation of the Zarounian/Tripp 140 cubic inch Autcocraft Volkswagen powered Edmunds coil midget, displayed as it would have appeared in the 1984 USAC (United States Auto Club) midget season carrying the number “1” to signify Tripp’s championship in the USAC Western States midget series in 1983. 
 

Photo by the author

Tripp also captured the 1985 USAC Western States Series championship in the same Edmunds car with Volkswagen power as well as a win at the Belleville Midget Nationals, and he won the Western States Series championship and the Belleville crown again in 1987 when the Edmunds built car was powered by a Cosworth engine.

Photo by the author

In his storied career, Tripp won eighteen midget feature races at Ventura Raceway, part of his total of 104 USAC Western States Series wins, 78 of which came behind the wheel of a Zarounian owned midget. When combined with his 59 USAC National Midget Series wins, Tripp is third on the USAC all-time wins list and is a member of the National Midget Auto Racing Hall of Fame  

Photo courtesy of Ventura Raceway

With the original Edmunds car lost after it was sold in 1988, Jeff Terry sourced a similar chassis from Texas. Since Terry was a member of the crew for the original car, he was able to restore it over a three-month period and display the re-creation at the 2019 Turkey Night Grand Prix, which featured a scale model of the car built by Ventura promoter Jim Naylor as the trophy presented to race winner Kyle Larson.     

Goodbye to Irwindale Speedway

 

Doug Stokes recently shared the sad news that the last official day of occupancy at the Irwindale Event Center (aka Irwindale Speedway) will be January 31 2018. Irwindale Speedway opened on March 27 1999, and from 1999 through 2011 the lightning fast progressively banked   ½-mile paved oval hosted the Turkey Night Grand Prix for the United States Auto Club midget division in a program supported by the USAC Western States sprint cars

Through the years, truly legendary midget car drivers raced and won the Turkey Night Grand Prix on Irwindale’s asphalt - Tony Stewart and Bobby Santos each won there, and the Bryan Clauson won back to back in 2009 and 2010. Jason Leffler won twice in 1999 and 2005, while David Steele won in 2001 and 2003.

While those were all great victories, for the author the most memorable race win came with the 2011 Turkey Night Grand Prix, when New Castle Indiana’s Caleb Armstrong led the last 81 laps as he withstood challenges from Kody Swanson, Bryan Clauson, Darren Hagen and a young kid named Kyle Larson. Clauson, denied his third straight Turkey Night win, finished third to claim the 2011 USAC midget title his second straight championship.

That November night in 2011, rumors swept the pit area that Irwindale has lost its title sponsor Toyota and was closing; sure enough, in February 2012 the Speedway declared bankruptcy. Nearly a year later, the track reopened as the Irwindale Event Center on a year-to-year lease but the Turkey Night Grand Prix never returned as the track focused on stock cars, "drifting," and figure eight racing.

Goodbye to Irwindale, we will always have its great racing memories