2003 Year in Review

Sarah Weets is Super Junior Dragster Champion

Sarah Weets racing in "Super Junior Bracket" at Cordova Dragway.

While most teenagers will be going to the game, chatting on the internet, or just hanging out on weekends, 14 year-old Sarah Weets of Morrison is racing the 1/8th mile in 8.98 seconds. Last weekend, September 27-28, she became Cordova Dragway Park’s 2003 Junior Dragster Champion. She was third coming into the weekend but raced consistently and moved into first.

Weets has raced 10 point races about every-other weekend all summer and accumulated 295 points, to become number 1 in the Super Junior Bracket. . Sarah received a trophy, will get a “Gold Card” for winning the Championship and will not have to pay to race next year. There are no monetary prizes for Junior Champions. She drives a 13 foot ’95 Spitzer Dragster, a miniature version of a regular dragster. Her car has a 5 hp Briggs & Stratton modified engine and burns alcohol fuel. Racers start as young as 8 years old and race in the Novice Junior Bracket for two years before moving into the Super Juniors. They can race in that bracket until turning 18. “ Sarah is quiet and really smart. She goes off before a race and thinks about what she need to do and then goes out and does it. It’s a mind game,” Risa Weets, Sarah’s mom and the families’ crewperson, commented on her daughter’s success. “She has really fast reaction times with .098 off the start. But there are other considerations such as weather and temperature. She’s very consistent in her times.”

This is not her only win. About three years ago she was track champion of Route 66 in Joliet and track champion of Cordova in the same season.

Racing is in the families’ blood. There are thirteen member of the Weets family eligible to race. Sisters, Katie and Emily, also raced this year. Katie has been a successful racer the past nine years, and this was her last year. After an early mechanical failure she dropped out. Emily has won both days of the Junior Fest and an “Iron Man” trophy in Novice. But has moved up to Super Juniors against her sister this year.

This weekend Sarah goes to the “Summit Team Bracket Finals” in Cordova. Ten tracks from all over, including Alaska, send their top 5 Super Juniors and top 2 Novice Juniors to race for the “Iron Man” trophy. Along with trophies, prizes are awarded including saving bonds.

At the end of the month, they head to St. Louis for the Junior Nationals. “It’s always a good time,” explained Risa. “They have a decorated trailers contest and trick or treat between the trailers.”

Cordova Dragway

by Barb Benson, theCity1.com
October 3, 2003