Kevin Swindell may not get the publicity that NASCAR Sprint Cup Series driver Jimmie Johnson’s five straight championships did, but Swindell’s Saturday night win in the Chili Bowl–his third straight–has to rank nearly as high on the list of unlikely motorsports accomplishments.

 Swindell, of Germantown, Tenn., beat out 258 other competitors, including 2011 Cup champion Tony Stewart and NASCAR Nationwide Series champion Ricky Stenhouse Jr. In the 26-year history of the midget-racing event, no driver had won two straight until Swindell did last year, and now he has raised the record to three. Second in the 55-lap feature was his father, Sammy Swindell, who has won five times since the event began in 1987. California racer Kyle Larson was third.

 The race is held in the enormous QuikTrip Center at the Tulsa (Okla.) Fairgrounds, a building large enough not only for the quarter-mile clay oval track and Saturday’s 17,227 spectators, but even the teams’ haulers, along with a trade show hosting more than 100 vendors.

 Racers begin vying for a spot in Saturday’s 24-car main feature on Tuesday, working their way through feature races to lock into the top 12 for the feature. The remaining 12 were decided in 19 races that began Saturday morning.

 The main feature was scheduled for 50 laps, but race organizers increased it to 55–the usual car number for Broken Arrow, Okla., driver Donnie Ray Crawford, the 2007 Chili Bowl rookie of the year. Crawford, 24, a local favorite, was preparing to leave the family home for the track at 9 a.m. Saturday morning when his grandfather, 74-year-old Daniel Garcia, shot and killed him in a domestic dispute that left Garcia dead as well. Crawford’s parents were injured in the dispute. Garcia had a previous conviction for assault with a deadly weapon in 2005.

 Saturday night, one of Crawford’s teammates drove his late colleague’s midget to lead the field for the pace laps; fans wrote condolences to the family on posters placed next to his pit. Crawford flipped his midget twice during Wednesday’s qualifying races, and he had hoped to work his way through the preliminary races Saturday into the main feature.

 As for Cup champion Stewart, who won the Chili Bowl in 2002 and 2007, he started and finished 10th, but ran as high as eighth.

 “This is one of the races you want to win,” Stewart said. “It’s as important as the Daytona 500 for the racers and the fans who come here.”

By: Steven Cole Smith on 1/15/2012
Read more: http://www.autoweek.com/article/20120115/MOTORSPORTS/120119885#ixzz1jdV921Pg

Main image thanks to: www.speedtv.com