community
september13
9
2011
Chasing a Championship
Vernonia’s Doug Davenport is Having a Winning Season On The Dirt Track
By Scott Laird
Doug Davenport, from Verno-
nia, is having a great year on the dirt
track.
Racing in his Open Wheel,
Modified Stock Car, Davenport, who
drives truck for Mike Pihl Logging at
his day job, is tearing up the local Dirt
Track circuit this season on the week-
ends. Davenport, in his number 8 car,
is currently the points leader at River
City Speedway in St. Helens, has won a
few races at Sunset Speedway in Banks
and has also been competing in North-
west National events this year.
Recently at two Northwest
Modified Nationals, Davenport finished
second at Gray’s Harbor Raceway in
Elma, WA.; at Cottage Grove Speedway
Davenport finished sixth. “These are
the fastest guys in the five western states
and western Canada and the races draw
about sixty or seventy cars,” explains
Davenport.
The Open Wheel Modified class
is most often the featured event at small
local dirt tracks. The races are fast paced
and exciting—with cars racing a very
close quarters, at high speeds. “I think
everybody should go and check it out at
least once, ” says Davenport. “ You put
a bunch of guys out on a track at three
inches apart and it gets pretty intense.
And most of the time we’re sideways or
up on three wheels. It’s
pretty easy to get hooked
on it.”
The vehicle that Dav-
enport races is basically
a car with no fenders—it
is almost fully fabricated
with the front end of the
frame coming from a
stock car like a Chevelle
or a Monte Carlo; every-
thing else is fabricated
for motor sports use only.
The vehicles weigh about
2500 pounds with 650 horse power. “It
weighs what your normal Honda car
would but has five times the horse pow-
er,” explains Davenport.
Davenport races on dirt tracks
only—the track at River City and at the
Banks Speedway are a quarter mile and
are about 50 feet wide with speeds on
these smaller, tighter, tracks (racers call
them Bull Rings) reaching about sixty-
five miles per hour. On the larger, half-
mile tracks, speeds can reach up to 150
MPH.
In addition to racing at Gray’s
Harbor and Cottage Grove, Daven-
port has raced in Bakersfield, CA and
Reno, NV. “We go all over, wherever the
money is, and we race close to home for
the local shows,” says Davenport. He is
planning on attending the “Dual in the
Desert” at Las Vegas Motor Speedway
in November where he finished 40 th
last year out of 300 cars. “These are
the fastest guys in our sport nationwide;
everybody is either the fastest driver
from their local track or some kind of a
regional champion, they’re the best at
what we do,” says Davenport. “I learned
a ton last year—what I was doing wrong
and where I was doing it wrong and came
back and spent the next few months do-
ing research and studying.”
Keeping up with new technol-
ogy and equipment is a challenge in
auto racing, as Davenport learned last
year. He spent time and money updating
his vehicle and says it has a made a big
difference in his performance this year.
“I have fourteen starts and have eight
wins, two second place finishes, finished
fourth once, sixth once.” He expects to
have a serious shot at placing high in Las
Vegas in November. “We have all the
pieces in place this year,” he says.
Davenport’s good friend Fletch-
er Tofflmire works as his crew. “We
think a lot alike, work really well togeth-
er and we win a lot of races together,”
says Davenport about his partnership
with Tofflmire. He says his step sons,
Tyler and Trevor, also help a lot in the
shop and at the track.
A Vernonia native, Davenport
grew up around racing and started out
racing motorcycles as a kid.
He won four amateur moto-
cross championships before
getting injured. He worked on
stock cars for other people for
several years before deciding
he wanted to race himself and
has been steadily improving
over the last few years.
Davenport does all his
own work on his vehicle, fab-
ricating his own parts. He also
supplements his racing pro-
gram by doing work on vehi-
cles for other drivers.
Davenport has contin-
ued to race this season at his home track
in St. Helens after winning the first race
of the season. “Since I started out with
the points lead I went ahead and stayed
over there and am racing for Champion-
ship points,” says Davenport. “I need to
have a championship—I won four cham-
pionships racing bikes and I’ve been
racing cars now for sixteen years and I
haven’t won a championship yet. I’ve
won lots of races all over the west, but
I don’t really have anything to show for
it. I would really like to win a champi-
onship—have some kind of accomplish-
ment to show for what we’ve done.”
Davenport’s last race of the sea-
son at River City Speedway will be Sep-
tember 17 th .
CAT Builds Energy Efficient Home in Vernonia
At an open house in Vernonia on Au-
gust 31, 2011, Community Action Team, Inc.
debuted one of their latest building projects: A
home built and equipped with some of the latest
energy efficient technologies. The idea to build
such a home was born at a company retreat with
a two year goal set to accomplish the task. This
year they got the opportunity when building a
home for the Mark and Deanna Brown family
who agreed to let Community Action Team ex-
periment with the idea.
Community Action Team specializes
in self-help, affordable housing and typically
works with USDA loans that adjust interest
rates based on the income of the homeowners.
Casey Mitchell with Community Action Team
(CAT) thanked the Brown family for trusting
CAT to do a bit of experimenting with the home.
He also thanked the Mennonites who have been
assisting Vernonia rebuild since the December
03, 2007 flood. He said, “Without their labor,
we couldn’t have gotten here. A lot of the gear
in the home is pretty expensive stuff and by sup-
plementing with volunteer labor we were able to
buy that equipment and still make it affordable.”
Earth Advantage Institute, a not-for-
profit organization based out of Portland, Or-
egon that works with the building industry to
implement sustainable building practices, pro-
vided guidance to CAT to ensure the measures
to build the home and equipment used within
were cost effective for the homeowner. They
also tested the indoor air quality of the home.
continued on page 18
The Brown family with members of CAT in front of their new home.
We have ice cream!
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Owned and Operated by
Don & Kim Wallace
Open for
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ath Health Se
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By Jill Hult
Dr. Carol McIntyre
Naturopathic & Chinese Medicine
503.481.4096
cccmnd@yahoo.com
naturalpathhealthservices.com
Serving Vernonia since 1970
721 Madison Avenue, Vernonia
(503) 429-5018
786 Bridge Street
Vernonia, OR, 97064
