February 16, 2009

Article courtesy of Karen Sutterlin
JJ Yeley Fan Club Member

JJ YELEY To Drive Feb. 20-21 in Manzanita's third running of the “Copper on Dirt” , Phoenix, Arizona.

JJ will be driving in the Sprints and Midgets portions of the schedule and will be racing the Cruz Pedregon #1 Midget and the #1 TCR Sprint.

photo by Rudy Garcia

The Sprint Cars will be racing for national points as will the USAC Midgets and the USAC Silver Crown Cars. Qualifying races will be Friday night, followed by the championship events Saturday night.

JJ will be hoping to add another Sprint/Midget Sweep to his resume.  Jack Hewitt and Dave Steele remain the only two drivers with three Sprint/Midget “sweeps” in USAC history. Jeff Gordon,  Tony Stewart and J.J. Yeley, have two “sweeps” each, while only 14 others have achieved it once.  JJ will try to join Jack Hewitt and Dave Steele with three.




Feb 19 - Practice for Copper


A practice session, open to the public with free admission in the grandstands, will start off the Copper on Dirt on Thursday, from 6:00 to 9:00 P.M.
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Feb 20 - “Sands Chevrolet Copper On Dirt”


The Friday night program will have qualifying runs, 8 lap heat races and a 10 lap Copper Bowl Shootout for all three Series.

The midgets and sprints will run five heats with the top two finishers in each heat earning postions in the Shootout. Cars finishing 3-8 transfer to the "B" with the cars taking the checkered flag in 9th-12th go to the "C".

The Silver Crown will determine the number of heats by the car count.

The front gate will open at 3:00 P.M. with racing starting at 6:30.


Feb 21 - “Sands Chevrolet Copper On Dirt”


Saturday night will start off with "C" mains the "B" mains followed by main events for each series.

The midget feature will race 25 laps.
The sprints feature will race 40 laps
The Silver Crown feature will race 50 laps.


The three divisions will be racing for a purse of $83,400.