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MIDGET: Fornoro Gunning for Midget Win No. 100 Saturday Night at IRP

23 May 1998

INDIANAPOLIS, - Nick Fornoro Jr. of Reeders, Pa., will be gunning for his 100th midget feature victory Saturday night in the prestigious "Budweiser Night Before the 500" USAC midget race at Indianapolis Raceway Park. The event will be televised live on ESPN2.

He'll be behind the wheel of a Boston Hawk midget with an Autocraft VW engine owned by Skip Hultgren of Belmont, N.H.

Fornoro, a prime candidate for an Indy Racing League (IRL) Indy car ride, won this event in 1985 and 1987 and finished second in this race in 1986.

When counting the many different kinds of race cars that he has driven, he has 176 feature triumphs. He has raced on 114 different speedways, and he's won on 56 of them.

His 99th career midget feature victory occurred in a North American Midget Auto Racing Series (NAMARS) event May 9 at Shadybowl Speedway in DeGraff, Ohio, in a car owned by Mack McClellan.

Fornoro earned his sixth American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC) CARQUEST midget series championship in 1995. That put him two titles away from tying retired driver Len Duncan's record eight ARDC driving crowns. He is fifth on the ARDC feature winners' list from 1955-1998.

Fornoro was also the Northeast Midget Assn. (NEMA) champion in 1981. He was also the champion of several other clubs. His father, Nick Fornoro Sr., was the 1950 ARDC driving champion and the first NASCAR midget champion (1953), when that organization sanctioned midget events. His brother, Drew, is also a midget champion.