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VINTAGE . VOTRA Vintage Classics IX Dirt Track Series By Scott Rousseau Photos by Dan Mahony OKALHOMA CITY, OK, JULY 28 fter today's dirt track heroes battled it out for AMA Grand National glory at Oklahoma City's State Fair Speedway on Saturday night, the Vintage Dirt Track Racing Association turned back the clock as it took to the same grooved half mile for round nine of the VDTRA Vintage Oassics Dirt Track Series. The VDTRA National, which also hosted an AMA Pro-Am race, diew in excess of 100 riders, but it was the 20-lap Open Pro Twin event and Iowa-based Rick Fiscel who took center stage. The 36-year-old Iowan was never headed after he passed a soft-spoken but hard-charging Mike Ragan on the second lap and then fought off a strong challenge from Ragan through the middle to late stages of the main event before cruising to victory 6n his BiU Rimenschneider-built R&D Racing Trackmaster Triumph 750 after Ragan's Shell Yamaha 750 expired on the 15th lap. Iowa's Matt George brought the Max Leathers Harley-Davidson XR750 home in third after experiencing severe clutch slippage right from the start of the feature. There was some confusion as to whether the Open Pro Twin main event was slated to go the full 20 laps or whether it was shortened to just 10 when the nine-rider field left the line. Ragan grabbed the holeshot with Fiscel in tow while George, who had been sent to the penalty line for jumping the start, got a flyer of a start and was quickly parked on Ragan's rear wheel as the field entered turn one. As they slid off turn two, however, George's chances for victory slipped away as quickly as his A Round 14: State Fair Speedway (Above) Open Pro Twin winner Rick Flscel (53) leads Mike Ragan (84) and Matt George (20) early I.n the main event at .the VDTRA Oklahoma City National. Flscel went on to win the race by a country mile after Ragan suffered mechanical Ills. (Right) Kurtis Taylor throttled a Trackmaster Triumph to the runner-up spot In the Open Pro Twin feature. clutch, and he soon found himself behind Triumph-mounted. Kurtis Taylor, Eric Bland, and John Fike. Up front, Fiscel slipped under Ragan in turns one and two to lead lap three, and the two riders quickly established a torrid pace that would put them far ahead of the rest of th.e field. Bland was the first rider to fall out of the race as he limped off the track with a flat rear tire. Further back in the pack, George was somehow ·managing to keep his machine driving forward as he shot by Fike in turn one to grab the foUJ:!h spot behind a flying Taylor. The two riders then hooked up and freight-trained around the groove, with George making several attempts at Taylor in turns three and four only to lose ground in one and two. Ragan turned up the heat on FisceJ just past the halfway j:>oint and actually There was no catching Fiscel, who now had a three-quarter-lap lead on second place by lap 16 and was able to roll out of the throttle and cruise the final four laps to victory. Fiscel admitted later that he could hear Ragan behind him for much of the race. "I was running at three-quarter throttle to save the motor and the tires, and myself," Fiscel said. "But then he started tightening it up, so I ran it wide open for