Teen two-time winner in Orange Show Winter finale

SAN BERNARDINO — Jimmy Rouse Jr. became the only repeat winner in the Stock Cars USA class as the four-race Orange Show Speedway Winter Series concluded. From Jim Short and OSS.

Rouse Jr., 14, of San Bernardino, made his debut in a full-sized stock car when the Winter Series opened Dec. 3 and got his initial win Dec. 17, when he also set fast time in qualifying and won a heat race. He repeated that effort Sunday by setting the pace in qualifying and winning his heat race before capturing the 25-lap main event on the quarter-mile paved oval. Rouse Jr. started back in the field and worked his way toward the front while Mark Johnson, Ron Davis and Blake Usilton took turns leading. Rouse Jr. got the lead on lap 16 and finished a comfortable distance ahead of regular season champion Harry Michaelian Jr. and his step-mother, Michelle Rouse. 

Chad Schug of Oak Hills drove his 1937 Ford Coupe replica to a win in the 25-lap feature for Legends Cars, which was interrupted six times by yellow caution flags and once by a red flag. Schug took the lead from Riverside’s Taylor Price on lap 11 and never trailed thereafter. He was challenged for the lead by Tom Landreth of Rancho Cucamonga on lap 21, but Landreth lost traction in Turn 4 and spun, yielding second to heat race winner Gary Schuerell of Murrieta.

Rick Walton of La Crescenta held off 2006 class champion Dean Caskey of Grand Terrace in a bumper car finish to win the 15-lap Mini StocKar main, 11-year-old Benjamin Mahan of Hesperia continued his domination of the Jr. Mini StocKar class, and Jack Madrid won the 15-lap Bandoleros feature.

The ASA Outlaws, a Figure 8 division that will race at the track in 2007, closed the program with a 15-lap exhibition race won by Tom Smith of Lakewood, a former Orange Show regular who won the Figure 8 title at Irwindale Speedway last season.

Stock car racing at Orange Show Speedway will resume March 3, when the regular season opens with the debut of the ASA Outlaws Figure 8 cars, ASA Late Models, ASA Stock Ponys, Legends Cars and a Demolition Derby.

For further information, contact Jim Short at 951-203-2649 or jimshort65@sbcglobal.net, call 909-888-6788, X438, or visit the web site at www.nosevents.com.