SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Less than two weeks remain before the historic NARC Fujitsu General USA Sprint Cars embark on their 63rd season, and an interesting silly season coupled with the largest schedule in many years have created many storylines to follow throughout the season.
The season opens April 2 at Stockton Dirt Track and the 25 events on the calendar is the most for the series since 2007. The series is scheduled to visit 13 tracks in three states (California, Oregon and Washington). The farthest southern point on the schedule is Bakersfield’s Kern County Raceway Park, with the northernmost race set for Washington’s Skagit Speedway. The campaign is scheduled to end back at Stockton on Nov. 5.
• Fresno’s Dominic Scelzi is coming off what he’s commonly referred to as a “dream season” in 2021 that he punctuated with his first NARC title. The 24-year-old delivered one of the most dominant seasons in series history and had the championship wrapped up before the final event of the year. Scelzi will look to defend his crown in 2022.
A key element to his title campaign will also return as Jimmy Carr enters his third year with Scelzi Motorsports. Scelzi credits Carr for elevating his performance to new heights as the reigning champ nearly doubled his career sprint car win tally last year, adding 22 triumphs to his pre-2021 count of 27.
Scelzi has won at seven of the 13 tracks featured on this year’s schedule, but he hasn’t had an opportunity to make a series start at a handful of the tracks due to the recent absence of the Pacific Northwest dates that have returned.
Scelzi owns some 360 starts at the Oregon and Washington facilities including two wins in three nights at last year’s Dirt Cup at Skagit Speedway.
• The 2019 NARC champion, D.J. Netto, slipped slightly in performance in 2021, coming home second in points with a victory, nine top-fives and 16 top-10s.
Though the Hanford native is scaling back his racing calendar as his responsibility at the family business increases, Netto still intends to take on the full NARC tour in search of title number two. Netto has become one of the most consistent forces of the NARC roster over the past several years, earning top-10s in more than 85 percent of his series starts since the beginning of 2016.
After the runner-up finish last year, the 26-year-old is motivated to get back to the top of the standings and claim a second championship.
• Last year brothers Tim Kaeding and Bud Kaeding finished up third and fourth in the standings, and the duo hope to occupy the top two slots in 2022.
Two-time series champion Tim returns to the seat of the Bates-Hamilton Racing No. 42x. TK picked up a pair of victories, the 70th and 71st of his career, last season aboard the machine and narrowly missed the runner-up spot in the standings. The West Coast legend put together the longest streak of top-10s in 2021, stacking 11 straight from July to October.
After finishing seventh in the season opener, Bud Kaeding collected five consecutive top-fives highlighted by a pair of runner-ups at Petaluma and Watsonville. The hot streak gave him the points lead, but a crash at the Howard Kaeding Classic began to derail the season.
Bud consistently finished in the top-10 through the second half of the year, but he and the BK Racing team couldn’t find the speed they had early on. Bud will be back aboard his family’s iconic No. 69 BK Racing machine.
The Faccinto brothers, Mitchell and Michael, are both set to tackle the full season for the first time.
The duo shook up silly season with announcements revealing that Mitchell would head to Tarlton Motorsports to wheel the No. 21 with Michael handling driving duties on the Mike Phulps-owned No. 56.
Though they’re brothers and a similar age, their racing histories with NARC are quite different. Mitchell owns 90 career series starts since debuting in 2013 and has earned top-10s in over half of them along with three victories.
Michael, a micro and midget ace, only has two series starts to his credit, though he has spent considerable time behind the wheel of a 360-sprint car over the past few years.
• At Petaluma Speedway in May of last year, 15-year-old Joel Myers Jr. made his presence felt with his first series podium. The top-three came in just his second career NARC start and aboard his family-owned ride. He went on to compete in 16 of the 21 features and picked up four more top-10s along the way.
This season, the rising talent has been hired to wheel the Vertullo Motorsports No. 83v and the team has have prioritized the NARC campaign.
The Vertullo ride has helped produced some of the sport’s best with names like Kyle Larson, Brad Sweet and Chuck Gurney getting behind the wheel early in their careers, and Myers Jr. is looking to add his name to the list.
After not completing a full NARC season in a handful of years, Vertullo returned in 2021 with veteran Sean Becker as his pilot and earned the fifth position in points. The pairing picked up a popular win last summer in the Howard Kaeding Classic.
NARC’s second winningest driver of 2021, Justin Sanders, is heading to Mittry Racing to pilot the No. 2. Last year the Aromas native began the tour aboard Larry Antaya’s car and picked up an early win at Petaluma.
Sanders sat out a doubleheader weekend in July but came back in a new ride for the Fastest Four Days in Motorsports.
Sanders hopped in the Kevin Kozlowski-owned and Paul Silva-prepared Works Limited No. 57 and won in his debut in the car at Merced. The partnership went on to claim four of the final 12 races of the season as Sanders nearly doubled his career NARC win total, jumping to 11 after starting the year with six.
• After having made only nine NARC starts over three years prior to 2021, Billy Aton followed the entire tour last year and came home with rookie-of-the-year honors after finishing sixth in points. He’ll be back this season with hopes of improving a few spots in the standings.
The highlight of Aton’s campaign came in July at Santa Maria Raceway when he started on the pole and led all 30 laps en route to his inaugural NARC victory in his 18th series start.
• Savvy veteran Willie Croft intends to tackle the entire NARC tour with his sights on his first title. The Colfax native has competed over the full schedule five times before with a best result of third in the standings back in 2007.
Croft has been one of the most consistent forces over his roughly two decades of wheeling sprint cars, having tallied eight victories, more than 50 top fives and more than 100 top-10 finishes with the West Coast’s premier 410 series.
• The pilot of his family-owned Billet America No. 98, Sean Watts, plans to take on the entire NARC schedule again.
The 26-year-old has collected 15 top-10s with the series in his career, highlighted by a 2019 win at Stockton, a facility with four dates on the 2022 NARC calendar.
• Fremont’s Shane Golobic tentatively plans to race all but one of the 25 scheduled events, the lone absence being the July Petaluma date. He’s the owner of 13 career series wins and always a threat to park the Matt Wood Racing machine in victory lane. Though he missed a few events last season, Golobic still managed to notch the second most podiums and top-fives.
• Northern California will have a frequent visitor from down under this year in the form of Kerry Madsen. The 28-time World of Outlaws feature winner has partnered with Roth Motorsports to run a schedule consisting of a blend of West Coast and Midwest races.
• The Carrick brothers hope to frequent NARC events this season. Both Tanner and Blake have made many appearances in the top-10 but are still seeking their first series victories. With more 410 engines in their shop and more 410 races on the schedule, it wouldn’t be surprising to see them both collect their inaugural NARC wins.
Last year Tanner picked up his first career NARC podium at the Howard Kaeding Classic, and that same night Blake notched his best series finish to date by running fourth. Iowa driver Austin McCarl will also race about half the NARC schedule aboard the Keith Offill 88 sprint car. He will be looking for his first NARC victory.
• Iowa driver Austin McCarl plans to drive Keith Offill’s number 88 sprint car around the West Coast before embarking on a swing through the Midwest. He is still looking for his first NARC victory in California.
• After making a name for himself piling up ASCS regional trophies over the past several years, Logan Forler is diving more into 410 racing by making an attempt at a NARC title this year.
The Idaho driver hasn’t contested a NARC race since 2014, but he’ll change that in a big way in 2022 by tackling all 25 events. In five career series starts Forler has earned two top-fives, one at Southern Oregon Speedway and one at Placerville Speedway.
Keyword: NARC Notes: Season Preview