Hoskins, Shade, Groff, England, Cromer Earn IHRA Sportsman Spectacular presented by Moser Engineering Wins at Kil-Kare Raceway

5/19/2024

IHRA Events

Hoskins, Shade, Groff, England, Cromer Earn IHRA Sportsman Spectacular presented by Moser Engineering Wins at Kil-Kare Raceway

XENIA, OH — The IHRA Sportsman Spectacular presented by Moser Engineering at Kil-Kare Raceway featured great car counts and fun celebrations for over a half-dozen racers.

Joe Hoskins in Super Pro (Box), Walt Shade Jr. in Pro (No Box), Cameron Groff in Sportsman, Andrew England in Motorcycle and Tyler Cromer in Junior Dragster all took home the big checks, prestigious IHRA Ironman trophies and the specially-designed commemorative medals for their victories. Two others won Junior Dragster main events.

Hoskins won on a holeshot for the $5,000 main event victory for the Super Pro (Box) class. Hoskins had the .008 reaction time to .073 for fellow finalist Alex High. Hoskins’ final numbers included a 6.594-second pass at 99.29 mph against a 6.57 dial-in. High was closer to his 4.95 dial-in with a 4.957-second run at 138.85 mph.

Shade had an even quicker start to take the Pro (No Box) victory. He was .002 at the tree to go along with 6.199-second elapsed time at 91.19 mph with a 5.89 dial-in. Groff had problems at the start and ended up as the runner-up.

Groff was able to celebrate after the Sportsman final where he posted a winning package of 7.955-second pass at 84.27 mph against a 7.87 dial-in with a .067 reaction time. Kory Wieske was runner-up with a 10.478-second run at 66.05 mph on a 10.42 dial-in and a .106 reaction time.

England was the best on two wheels with a terrific .001 start and went down the strip in 6.471 seconds at 107.76 mph on a 6.44 dial-in. Steve Withem was runner-up with solid numbers of a .022 reaction time and a 6.079-second elapsed time at 111.20 mph on a 6.05 dial-in.

Cromer won the run-off for the Junior Dragster victory after taking the 13-17 year-old victory. Cromer and Luke Mathews both had 7.90 dial-in times in the 13-17 final. Mathews had the slight .029 to .036 advantage at the start, but Cromer, who finished in the 2023 IHRA National Top 10 list, posted a 7.908-second elapsed time at 81.63 mph. Mathews finished in 7.917 seconds at 81.54 mph.

There were two other Junior Dragster races with Braxton Vance taking the 10-12 victory and Kaiden Travis the runner-up. Bristol Perkins won the 6-9 category race when he got a bye in the final round. Cromer got off the starting line .010 to .023 for Vance and parlayed that into a win in the Junior Dragster run-off.

There’s a doubleheader for the IHRA Sportsman Spectacular presented by Moser Engineering scheduled for Saturday, May 25 with races at Dragway 42 in Ohio and Music City Raceway in Tennessee.