Randy Cabral Victorious in NEMA’s Return to Star Speedway
Celebrating its diamond anniversary, the NEMA Midgets made their first visit to Star Speedway since 2007 on Saturday night. Star has hosted the NEMA Midgets more than any track in its 60-year history. 3-time NEMA champion Randy Cabral was eager to return to the 1/4 mile speedplant. “I love that place. I was happy when they added Star to our schedule. … "It was my original stomping grounds. That was the track that I raced at for most of my first five years of racing. So it’s kind of feels good to go back there and be able to run good, to be able to run competitive because I didn’t know if I was going to be able to or not.”
The fans turned out to see their favorite Midget drives compete. “I couldn’t believe the amount of people that were up there that were coming out to watch us," said Cabral. "I hope that we put on a show that they liked." … "Star Speedway's got the best fans of any race track in the country. It was a good place to get back in front of all those people.”
Following a crash at Stafford Motor Speedway last month, Cabral's team had to replace the 7-year-old shocks with new ones. “We’re going to try the setup that we kind of found for the rest of the year and see how it goes. The car just felt really good. We went to Lee and the car felt OK but it almost had too much grip. So we actually had to take a little bit of grip away from it and I think that in the long run this is going to be a good thing. The car felt like it was back to the old 47 not the car I’ve been struggling with the last half of the year and this year.“
Saturday night was his first win of the season, which broke a tie for 5th in all-time NEMA wins with 4-time and inaugural champion Bill Eldridge."The way I see it is the old timers are still the real racers versus what we do now," said Cabral. "They were hardcore. We’ve got power steering, the best of everything. ..They’re still the top of the all-time win list.” Cabral later joked “I don’t know if being high up on the win list means a good thing or if it just means I’ve been in the series too long.”
Cabral also extended his consecutive winning seasons streak to 13, 2nd only to 6-time champion Dave Humphrey. "Honestly that probably means more to me than championships," said Cabral. "To still be in that class with Dave Humphrey is a pretty good feeling. I know I’ll never reach his win list or his championship total but at least I’ve got something along with him. It’s kind of a good feeling to be able to be on the same page with Dave Humphrey at least somewhere in the history books.”
Next on the schedule is the 3rd annual Shane Hammond Memorial Race at Waterford Speedbowl Saturday night. Both the NEMA Midgets and NEMA LItes will be in action for 37-lap features. Although Cabral has the most NEMA wins at the popular 1/3 mile oval, he has not won in 5 seasons. "The car hasn’t been perfect, we’ve kind of just got lucky," said Cabral. "That’s kind of what it comes down to a little bit what kind of luck you end up having if everything goes your way. Stafford didn’t go my way but that’s the first race that hasn’t gone my way in a long time so you really can’t complain about that."
“Yea that’s what I’m hoping for. It’s real hard to win 2 in a row so I’m not going to really go out looking for that but you never know what can happen. If it does its going to be awesome. It’s kind of nice to win the Lite race because originally I was putting 2 Lite cars together and I was driving one and Shane was driving the other. We just never ended up making it that far. Both cars were ready to go but with everything that happened, I only had to bring 1 car for the very first race at Waterford with the Lites. Unfortunately, Shane wasn’t there along with it.”
Cabral is not concerned with getting a fourth championship this season. "Championship wise, me going out to Indy was kind of my point proving that I’m not really running for a championship," said Cabral. "If were there at the end that’s great, just like last year. I don’t have fun running for the championships and if I was trying to for the championship, I would not be running NEMA Lites. I would just be racing NEMA and really trying to concentrate with NEMA and seeing what we have with that. But I have more fun racing than I do racing for championships. So I wouldn’t really say that I’m a championship contender.”
John Zych, Jr. currently leads the NEMA point standings. “I like it," said Cabral. "I think John is a great race car driver. He’s real clean. You can race him real hard and get right up on the wheel with him and know you’re not go for a ride. Honestly if anybody’s going to win a championship I’d like to see John win it. He deserves it. There’s a lot of people that deserve it. It’s just that right now he’s in contention and maybe someone else will be in contention next year.”
Beyond the NEMA Midgets and Lites, Cabral has a busy schedule with Legends Cars and Pro 4 Modifieds. "The Legends Car I just haven’t had the time," said Cabral. "I haven't been out much with that, but that’s just kind of a fun thing that me and Lee Bundy do. Its Lee Bundy’s race car he just lets me drive it and we go to have fun with it.”
"As far as everything else, I’m racing for Jim Darlington in the Pro 4 Modifieds and we blew the motor up at Stafford running 3rd," said Cabral. "So at this point we’re hoping between either a load of sponsorship money or a little bit of help to try to get a motor back together so we can try to finish up the season with that. I like racing with that division. I enjoy racing with Pro 4s as much as I enjoy racing with NEMA so it should be nice to get back out there. I was hoping to get the car back together for Waterford on August 4th in the Pro 4s but I either got to work to make money so I can put it together or put the car together and not have the money to go racing so it’s kind of a double edged sword.”
Cabral has a positive outlook for the remainder of his season. “It’s been a fun first half of the season," said Cabral. "I can’t complain so far, hopefully the rest of it goes that way.”
Sources: Nicholas Teto/YankeeRacer.com