I too was extremely disappointed in the Anderson Race last night and how it was managed.

This was the 4th and 5th race of the season, during the drivers meeting in the 1st race, we are told that all rookies will have stripes on their cars and will start at the tale at all races. They will then be evaluated and once USAC has determined you are experienced enough to start in the front and race their, they'll take your stripe off. After only three races, two rookies of about six to seven have started all three races (and finished them too). They were definitely the better of the rookies and should have been the only two to have their stripes pulled off at this race. Instead, USAC tells all rookies their stripes will be pulled off and they will start in their positions they drew for. The first heat race had two rookies on the front row, the pole car had never ran a race at Anderson Speedway before, and the outside pole car had started one, but DNFed in it. They quickly went to the back, and it was a miracle that a big accident didn't occur. It's just hypocritical of USAC to talk about how big and bad Anderson is and how they're doing these rookie stripes for the kids with little to no experience and look at who ends up on the front row.

So besides that, we are told June 11th will be TWO COMPLETE SHOWS, because of this, the format was slightly different and they e-mailed it to us telling us both features would be 30 laps, as always. They do the practice and heats as always and determine the feature lineup the usual way they're supposed to, but when they get to the feature, it's 25 laps. It's changed without any notification for the drivers. That's wasn't too big of a deal. So after the first set of features there is a short intermission. We are told heat races will be coming up next. We're getting ready for heat races when USAC tells us they will not be doing heat races and instead are taking the previous features finishing lineup and inverting the top 6, and with all this, they forgot to tell us they once again have shortened the features, now to 20 laps. So everyone is pissed and the word ******** seems to be the most used word in the pit area all around. Also, fast cars who were running up front in the first feature before being wrecked are now having to start in the back of a track where their is little to no passing. Isn't this supposed to be two complete events? So why is something from one event being carried over to another? So we go out onto the track and end up getting wrecked in the 1st corner by a rookie (on the 1st lap), another car behind me comes to a stop until he gets plowed from behind by another rookie. I know it's easy to point fingers at the other drivers, but it's not them I'm disappointed at, because it was a racing incident in my opinion. I'm disappointed in USAC and how they change things whenever they want. This isn't the first time they've done this too, it seems as if every time we come to Anderson, they change the format every single time. It's just a matter of inconsistency and it's really pissing a ton of people off.

Also, after the feature the top 3 cars are to be weighed and measured up to make sure they're within guidelines. However, after the first feature the only thing that was done was weighing of the winner. This is insulting that they can't even get their tech procedure right, especially since we were DQed the 1st race after winning by being 3/8 of an inch to wide (I'll also add that before we went out onto the track we were told that our car was okay).

Lastly, the schedule is ever changing. Every week races are added/removed, this Tuesday, Grundy (a track 4 hours away for most of us) was added to the schedule for this Saturday. Most people didn't even know about this until yesterday at Anderson when people were talking, some still don't even know. There was no notification to any of us that they had scheduled it. This definitely is not the first time races have been added with short notice, and probably won't be the last.

Anyway, I'm done with my rant. I'm just disappointed in the lack of professionalism in the whole event last night and the scheduling.

- Tyler Cottongim
#28 Kenyon Car Driver