A new event for the area had such prestige that the state's governor attended.

Nesquehoning Grand Prix was held Sunday on the grounds of the Kovatch Mobile Equipment Corporation.The event featured slingshot racing, which for those unfamiliar with auto racing, is a smaller version of a dirt modified/asphalt race car.The event, which was sponsored by Kovatch Motorsports and Pencor Services, was held to raise money for the Sonny Kovatch Scholarship Foundation, which was created to aid those who would like to pursue a career in secondary education.Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett was among the more than 1,000 spectators for the event."When you take something you know and you can turn it into something like this, it's always a good thing. Our family have always been motor heads, I mean our corporation was built from a two-car garage in 1946," said event director John Kovatch Jr."Today's event is all about raising money for a good cause, by using something that we know, which is racing. It's also about promoting family and getting people out of their house on a nice spring day to enjoy a pretty cool spectacle."When you think racing, you automatically think it's all about winning, but Sunday's event was about a lot more than just that."Today isn't all about just going fast," said Kovatch Jr."There was a lot of teamwork and a lot of family involved in making this happen today. You can see by the turnout we have, we were hoping for 600 people and over a 1,000 showed up. We also raised over $60,000 today from all of our sponsors. It was just an overall successful day. We were able to get some exposure to the sport of racing today as well."As impressive as the day's events were, perhaps even more impressive was the field of drivers on hand. Dirt modified great Craig Von Dohren and up and coming modified star Billy Pauch Jr. were two of many talented drivers competing. Pauch, who is the son of dirt racing legend Billy Pauch Sr., had nothing but great things to say about the day's festivities."The Kovatch family does a lot of great things for this area, so we were more than happy to come up here and support the cause," said Pauch. "This is just fun for us. The atmosphere here today is very cool. It's such a nice day and you can see that people in this area really like to support each other. We're all having a good time out here today."Another interesting aspect of the Nesquehoning Grand Prix is the race track itself. The track is located behind the Kovatch Ford Dealership and featured some pretty tricky twists and turns for the drivers."We had a lot of great people help us with track," said Kovatch."The guys from S&S Speedway and Hamlin Speedway came down to help out along with Rich Tobias. We had a rough idea of what we wanted, so once we got everything mapped out, we put the lines down and the dividers and some tires and made it happen. The track was built in about a week."With the huge amount of success the 2014 Nesquehoning Grand Prix generated, it is definitely something that will become an annual event for the Nesquehoning community.Racing journalist Dino Oberto, who is the track announcer at Mahoning Valley Speedway and Pocono International Speedway, was in charge of the microphone for the Grand Prix."I think today is an overwhelming success," said Oberto. "I mean look at all these people out here today. To also get the cast of drivers like we did out here is a tribute to the cause everyone is here for today. It's always good to see people come together like this and it's an added bonus that we get to see some good racing on top of it."Simon Egan won the 20-lap feature event at the end of the day, taking home the $500 winning purse.