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THREE IN A ROW! BOAT WINS OPENER AT BELLEVILLE

THREE IN A ROW!
BOAT WINS OPENER AT BELLEVILLE

Winner Chad Boat (second from right) is joined by 2nd place finisher Spencer Bayston (far right), 3rd place finisher Tanner Thorson and the trophy queen after winning Friday night’s “Belleville Midget Nationals” opener.
(Rich Forman Photo)
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Belleville, Kansas………Every once in a while, a team discovers the perfect combination: the right driver, the right car, the right setup and the right track, all at the right time.
Friday night, Chad Boat and the Tucker/Boat Motorsports crew were all in unison as they pulled down a tried and true, war-tested machine from the shelf to win their third consecutive feature at the “Belleville Midget Nationals,” something only Stan Fox had accomplished in the 40-year history of the prestigious event back in 1979 and 1980.
After an up-and-down, inconsistent season leading up to this week’s races, the team made the decision to return to the same Spike chassis that was driven to a sweep by Boat a season ago at Belleville. It’s a car that hadn’t made a single appearance during the 2017 season before Friday night, but now stands an undefeated 3-for-3 on the Belleville High Banks.
“We ran it at the end of last year a couple places,” Boat recalls. “It’s not perfect. It seems to be very temperamental, but it seems to really like Belleville, so I guess we’ll keep bringing it here.”
Despite being hooked up all night from the first time the PristineAuction.com – K & C Drywall/Spike/Speedway Toyota hit the track, the night wasn’t all chicken and stars. A persistent fault with the engine dogged the team throughout the night, forcing them to abort their hot lap session early with a head gasket issue as water pushed out from underneath the hood.
“The engine was tightening up and slowing down,” Boat recalls. “You can feel that in the car, especially here when they start to go. That’s obviously not ideal, but we do have great engines. We just had a little issue all night with this one. We knew it could be a problem in the feature, but when it’s Belleville, you have to go for it.”
At 25 laps, Friday night’s feature is 15 laps shorter than the Saturday night finale, meaning more urgency and fewer opportunities to stake a claim at the front. Boat set his compass to the north and headed to the front on the opening lap, getting around both Holly Shelton and Brady Bacon who battled wheel-to-wheel on the opening circuit. On the second lap, Boat worked his way past Bacon, then Shelton for the lead and, from there, found comfort in the middle of a heavy racetrack where he began to breakaway to a full second lead by lap five.”Usually on Friday night, the track is a little heavier and that makes gaining track position extremely tough,” Boat explains. “The start was going to be important and I knew I needed to get to the lead. Twenty-five laps doesn’t seem like much, but it’s still a long time around here. We were going to seek and find where we could run best. My car could go wherever, but the biggest thing was finding bite.”

By the 14th lap, USAC National Midget point leader Spencer Bayston began to track down Boat ever so slightly as he began his ascent on a goulash of lapped traffic. Boat arrived on the scene in turn one as Terry Goodwin and Jeff Stasa battled for position high and low. Boat split the two before sliding up the top to gain a little bit of distance between he and Bayston.
“It actually kind of worried me,” Boat remembers. “I didn’t really catch them in a great spot. I felt like I probably should’ve gone to the top. I felt like I did a terrible job getting through there, but I knew I needed not to slow down. Luckily, it was enough to get the lead.”
“The engine was tightening up and slowing down,” Boat recalls. “You can feel that in the car, especially here when they start to go. That’s obviously not ideal, but we do have great engines. We just had a little issue all night with this one. We knew it could be a problem in the feature, but when it’s Belleville, you have to go for it.” – Chad Boat
(Rich Forman Photo)

The moistrous racing surface started to widen out as the top line came in. Once the middle began to burn up, Bayston headed for the high road and began to make gains on Boat who shifted to the bottom, but on the 19th lap, fifth-running Bacon’s right rear tire expired atop the cushion between turns one and two, resulting in the night’s final caution period. That set up a seven-lap sprint to the finish without lapped traffic playing a role.

Remember the turmoil with the engine early in the night? Boat could feel the powerplant tightening up on him, forcing him to compensate to stay ahead of the game.
“Once the caution flew, I knew it was going to be a pretty green, open track,” Boat said. “I just knew I needed a good restart. I didn’t get a great one, though. It seemed like the engine stumbled and maybe something was wrong with it. I just drove it down into (turn) one so he couldn’t slide me and I was just kind of protecting. Once my engine slowed down, I knew I could move down the track because I would be able to keep the tires hooked up.”
“He was starting to run down the track a little bit more,” Bayston said. “The whole race, he’d been running up a little bit. I wasn’t sure if he was trying something new or trying to protect knowing I couldn’t really drive around the outside of him. On the final restart, I was hoping I could get to the inside of him in (turn) one. I got a good start, but he just took my line away from me. He’s a smart driver and did a good job there and that sealed it up for him.”
Bayston recovered from having his line stripped away from him and made a strong run at Boat in the final stretch, but to no avail as Boat drove to his third victory in a row on the half-mile high banks by a quarter of a second over Bayston, Tanner Thorson, Shelton and Justin Grant.
For the second-straight occasion, Lebanon, Indiana’s Bayston ran second to Boat at Belleville in his Keith Kunz-Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/IWX – Curb Records – TRD/Bullet by Spike/Speedway Toyota. Bayston was behind the wheel of a brand-new car that provided a little more headroom, but was a typical, lightning fast Keith Kunz car.
“It’s a taller cage car,” Bayston explains. “It’s two inches taller in the back and an inch-and-a-half taller in the front just for safety purposes. This car was built recently in the last couple of weeks and we brought it here for the first time tonight. Obviously, it’s got some speed behind it and, as the night went on, we got a lot faster.
Bayston’s teammate and defending USAC National Midget champion Tanner Thorson of Minden, Nevada set ProSource Fast Qualifying time to begin the night and took third in his Keith Kunz-Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/JBL Audio – TRD/Bullet by Spike/Speedway Toyota.
“I was pretty fast there toward the end of the race once the track slickened off a little bit,” Thorson admits. I struggled when the track was hooked up. We were pretty good everywhere except for the middle. I tried to go down there, but I didn’t have as much drive as those guys in front of me did. Starting in the third row made it tough tonight, but we were able to make up ground on the restarts. Those definitely helped me a lot and we were able to come away with a third tonight.”
Contingency award winners Friday night at the Belleville High Banks include Tanner Thorson (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Justin Grant (Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Shane Golobic (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner), Chad Boat (Chalk Stix/Indy Race Parts 3rd Heat Winner), Tyler Courtney (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Jeff Stasa (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: August 4, 2017 – Belleville, Kansas – Belleville High Banks – 40th “Belleville Midget Nationals”
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Tanner Thorson, 67, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-17.373; 2. Spencer Bayston, 97, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-17.390; 3. Chad Boat, 84, Tucker/Boat-17.511; 4. Ryan Robinson, 21, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-17.625; 5. Brady Bacon, 76m, FMR-17.627; 6. Holly Shelton, 67k, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-17.641; 7. Justin Grant, 39BC, Clauson/Marshall-17.663; 8. Brayton Lynch, 1k, RKR-17.664; 9. Tyler Courtney, 7BC, Clauson/Marshall-17.689; 10. Tanner Carrick, 71k, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-17.773; 11. Shane Golobic, 17w, Clauson/Marshall/Wood-17.780; 12. Jerry Coons Jr., 25, Petry/Goff-18.020; 13. Scott Hatton, 1, Hatton-18.144; 14. Jeff Stasa, 91s, SBR Motorsports-18.286; 15. Matt Johnson, 85, Central Motorsports-18.589; 16. Terry Goodwin, 2G, Goodwin-18.650; 17. Ryan Oerter, 43, RKO Management-19.266; 18. Collin Rinehart, 20, Rinehart-20.153; 19. Zach Middleton, 43a, RKO Management-20.182; 20. Robert Bell, 71½, Bell-20.662; 21. Ashley Oerter, 16, RKO Management-21.679; 22. Randy Oerter, 48, RKO Management-21.846; 23. Cody Brewer, 96, Central Motorsports-NT.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Grant, 2. Thorson, 3. Carrick, 4. Robinson, 5. Hatton, 6. Goodwin, 7. Middleton, 8. Randy Oerter. 2:21.20
COMPETITION SUSPENSION (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Golobic, 2. Bacon, 3. Bayston, 4. Lynch, 5. Stasa, 6. Ryan Oerter, 7. Bell. 2:23.14
BENIC ENTERPRISES/INDY RACE PARTS THIRD HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Boat, 2. Coons, 3. Shelton, 4. Rinehart, 5. Courtney, 6. A. Oerter. NT
FEATURE: (25 laps) 1. Chad Boat, 2. Spencer Bayston, 3. Tanner Thorson, 4. Holly Shelton, 5. Justin Grant, 6. Ryan Robinson, 7. Tyler Courtney, 8. Shane Golobic, 9. Brady Bacon, 10. Jerry Coons Jr., 11. Tanner Carrick, 12. Terry Goodwin, 13. Jeff Stasa, 14. Brayton Lynch, 15. Scott Hatton, 16. Robert Bell, 17. Matt Johnson, 18. Randy Oerter, 19. Ashley Oerter, 20. Zach Middleton, 21. Collin Rinehart, 22. Ryan Oerter. NT
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FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Lap 1 Shelton, Laps 2-25 Boat.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Tyler Courtney (22nd to 7th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Jeff Stasa
NEW USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Bayston-970, 2-Bacon-944, 3-Golobic-930, 4-Grant-893, 5-Thorson-869, 6-Courtney-868, 7-Coons-747, 8-Boat-690, 9-Shelton-662, 10-Robinson-628.
NEXT USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: August 5 – Belleville, Kansas – Belleville High Banks – 40th “Belleville Midget Nationals”

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BELL CAPITALIZES TO WIN HIS 2ND “CHAD McDANIEL MEMORIAL” IN BELOIT

THURSDAY, AUGUST 3, 2017

Christopher Bell tied A.J. Foyt for 31st on the all-time USAC National Midget win list with his 20th career win Wednesday night at
Solomon Valley Raceway in Beloit, Kansas.

(Rich Forman Photo)
BELL CAPITALIZES TO WIN HIS 2ND
“CHAD McDANIEL MEMORIAL” IN BELOIT
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Beloit, Kansas………Rarely do we have the opportunity to accurately measure the accomplishments of racers in the midst of their careers to those who came before them. After all, that’s what record books are for. But, when you join a name such as A.J. Foyt in any record book, it’s certainly something worth mentioning.
Bell did just that Wednesday night in the 8th Annual “Chad McDaniel Memorial” at Solomon Valley Raceway where he recorded his 20th career USAC National Midget feature victory, equaling the number of wins the four-time Indianapolis 500 champ procured with the series in his legendary career.
Yet, after seeing his one-lap track record fall earlier in the night, Bell more than made up from having his name erased from that segment of the record book by leading the final ten laps to join Bryan Clauson as the only two-time winner of the “Chad McDaniel Memorial.”
However, the 2013 event winner from Norman, Oklahoma would quickly point out that he was not the one to beat on this night, inheriting the lead after Tyler Thomas’ front end collapsed while leading exiting the second turn on lap 21 of the 30-lap event.
“The best driver didn’t win tonight, that’s for sure,” Bell said. “Tyler was doing a great job up there on the top. I could see he was struggling just like we were. I just wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to hang on for 30 laps. As it turned out, it was his car that couldn’t hang on for 30 laps. That was such a tough break for him.”
With that said, to inherit, you must first put yourself in position to grab opportunities when they arrive. Bell led in two separate stints, initially taking the lead between laps 7-14 before Thomas reclaimed the lead with a turn one slider on the 15th lap.
As Thomas began to extend his lead entering the final ten-lap stretch, his night would unexpectedly and heartbreakingly end when he began to slow dramatically with the front wheels as cockeyed as Marty Feldman’s eyes. It was a cruel twist of fate for the Oklahoman who, one night earlier, lost his lead late after leading the majority of the laps at Fairbury, Nebraska’s Jefferson County Speedway.
The shakeup moved Bell to the front and Justin Grant to second after he scurried back to the front following a drop to fifth in the opening stages.
On the restart, though, Bell erased any notion Grant had of victory on this night, quickly distancing himself from the USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car point leader in the final laps to score his third series win of the season in his Keith Kunz-Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/DeWalt – TRD/Bullet by Spike/Speedway Toyota.
“It was a tough, technical track tonight and that made it hard to run consistent laps,” Bell explained. “My biggest thing was that I had to lift down the straightaway to make sure the car wasn’t squatted. I had to have the car up so that it could glide across the holes and then find the smoothest part of the racetrack to get through.” – Christopher Bell
(Rich Forman Photo)

The feature wasn’t all smooth sailing for the 2013 USAC National Midget champion who was routinely seen bouncing through the turns as he manhandled his ride atop the quarter-mile dirt oval.

“It was a tough, technical track tonight and that made it hard to run consistent laps,” Bell explained. “My biggest thing was that I had to lift down the straightaway to make sure the car wasn’t squatted. I had to have the car up so that it could glide across the holes and then find the smoothest part of the racetrack to get through.”
On paper, it appears Justin Grant had a fairly smooth run to second from third, but after dropping back early on before making a late surge, his race was anything but in his Clauson-Marshall Racing/Driven 2 Save Lives – Priority Aviation/Spike/Stanton SR-11.
“I just tried to not get in a panic and, instead, let the racetrack come to us,” Grant said. “Our car was really good at the end and we started clicking back by guys and working the bottom lane while other guys were bouncing around the top. We really felt like we had something for Bell until that last caution.”
On off weekends, third-place finisher Holly Shelton travels back home to her native California and competes in an Outlaw Kart at Cycleland Speedway in Oroville. Last weekend, she won her second race there in four attempts before starting this four-race if five-night midget swing in the Heartland. While the differences between each of the cars are stark, Shelton admits that despite the differences, driving (and winning) in a variety of racecars simply makes you tougher to beat each time you get behind the wheel.
“An Outlaw Kart has no power steering and no shocks; they’re really low to the ground and your feet are hanging over the front tires,” Shelton detailed. “The first couple times I went from that to a midget, I struggled a bit. Whatever car you’re in, you should be able to adapt. Running the different cars just makes you a better driver.”
With the series at such a high-level right now and the competition so even amongst at least half the field each night, every little bit of an advantage a team can find does help. Shelton was the first to bring down the existing one-lap track record Wednesdaynight, ultimately timing in third, which guaranteed her a prime starting spot in the top few rows for the feature in her Keith Kunz-Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/Black & Decker – TRD/Bullet by Spike/Speedway Toyota.
“Qualifying is key in this series,” Shelton acknowledged. “The competition’s so stout, if you have to start mid-pack, it makes it really difficult on you. I learned that last night (at Fairbury, Neb.). I started 11th and really couldn’t get past them. Tonight, it was really major and we were able to take full advantage of a good qualifying run.”
Contingency award winners Wednesday night at Solomon Valley Raceway include Brady Bacon (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Cody Brewer (Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Shane Golobic (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner), Tyler Courtney (Chalk Stix 3rd Heat Winner), Jerry Coons, Jr. (Indy Race Parts 4th Heat Winner), Joe B. Miller (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Tucker Klaasmeyer (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: August 2, 2017 – Beloit, Kansas – Solomon Valley Raceway – 8th Annual “Chad McDaniel Memorial”
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Brady Bacon, 76m, FMR-12.319 (New Track Record), 2. Tanner Thorson, 67, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-12.334, 3. Holly Shelton, 67K, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-12.451, 4. Justin Grant, 39BC, Clauson/Marshall-12.588, 5. Brayton Lynch, 1K, RKR-12.599, 6. Tyler Thomas, 91T, Thomas-12.602, 7. Christopher Bell, 21, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-12.616, 8. Tanner Carrick, 71K, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-12.641, 9. Spencer Bayston, 97, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-12.671, 10. Tyler Nelson, 47, Mason-12.689, 11. Tyler Courtney, 7BC, Clauson/Marshall-12.696, 12. Chad Boat, 84, Tucker/Boat-12.780, 13. Ryan Robinson, 71, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-12.784; 14. Shane Golobic, 17w, Clauson-Marshall/Wood-12.789; 15. Tucker Klaasmeyer, 27, Klaasmeyer-12.814; 16. Jerry Coons, Jr., 25, Petry/Goff-12.897; 17. Cody Brewer, 96, Central-13.074; 18. Matt Johnson, 85, Central-13.150; 19. Chett Gehrke, 11c, Matteson-13.159; 20. Paul Babich, 69, Hamilton/Halarr-13.173; 21. Joe B. Miller, 7u, Trifecta-13.207; 22. Terry Goodwin, 2G, Goodwin-13.331; 23. Jeff Stasa, 91s, SBR-13.368; 24. Troy Simpson, 7, Hamilton-13.371; 25. Shaun Shapel, 84s, Shapel-13.479; 26. Collin Rinehart, 20, Rinehart-13.611; 27. Glenn Waterland, 11cw, Waterland-13.658; 28. Ryan Oerter, 43, RKO-13.752; 29. Randy Oerter, 48, RKO-14.318; 30. Ashley Oerter, 16, RKO-15.681.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Brewer, 2. Miller, 3. Bacon, 4. Robinson, 5. Bayston, 6. Lynch, 7. Shapel, 8. Ra. Oerter. 2:13.75
COMPETITION SUSPENSION, INC. (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Golobic, 2. Thomas, 3. Thorson, 4. Nelson, 5. Goodwin, 6. Johnson, 7. Rinehart, 8. A. Oerter. NT
CHALK STIX THIRD HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Courtney, 2. Klaasmeyer, 3. Bell, 4. Shelton, 5. Stasa, 6. Gehrke, 7. Waterland. NT
INDY RACE PARTS FOURTH HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Coons, 2. Grant, 3. Boat, 4. Carrick, 5. Simpson, 6. Babich, 7. Ry. Oerter. 2:12.14
SEMI: (12 laps) 1. Bayston, 2. Lynch, 3. Johnson, 4. Gehrke, 5. Babich, 6. Simpson, 7. Rinehart, 8. Ry. Oerter, 9. Stasa, 10. Shapel, 11. Waterland, 12. Goodwin, 13. Ra. Oerter, 14. A. Oerter. NT
FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. Christopher Bell, 2. Justin Grant, 3. Holly Shelton, 4. Tanner Thorson, 5. Brady Bacon, 6. Spencer Bayston, 7. Brayton Lynch, 8. Tanner Carrick, 9. Shane Golobic, 10. Jerry Coons, Jr., 11. Chad Boat, 12. Tyler Nelson, 13. Tucker Klaasmeyer, 14. Joe B. Miller, 15. Troy Simpson, 16. Tyler Thomas, 17. Tyler Courtney, 18. Chett Gehrke, 19. Ryan Robinson, 20. Matt Johnson, 21. Cody Brewer, 22. Paul Babich. NT
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**Courtney flipped on lap 14 of the feature.
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-6 Thomas, Laps 7-14 Bell, Laps 15-20 Thomas, Laps 21-30 Bell.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Joe B. Miller (21st to 14th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Tucker Klaasmeyer
NEW USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Bayston-892, 2-Bacon-889, 3-Golobic-873, 4-Grant-827, 5-Courtney-812, 6-Thorson-792, 7-Coons-697, 8-Boat-608, 9-Shelton-594, 10-Thomas-587.
NEXT USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACES: August 4-5 – Belleville, Kansas – Belleville High Banks – 40th Annual “Belleville Midget Nationals”

THORSON THUNDERS TO FIRST USAC MIDGET WIN OF 2017 AT JEFFERSON CO.

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 2, 2017

#67 Tanner Thorson battles Tyler Thomas for the lead in Tuesday night’s USAC National Midget feature at Jefferson County Speedway in Fairbury, Nebraska.
(Lonnie Wheatley Photo)
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Fairbury, Nebraska………Patience is a virtue, so they say and, indeed, good things come to those who wait.
Tanner Thorson was the epitome of each proverbial phrase at Jefferson County Speedway’s 2nd Annual Riverside Chevrolet “Tuesday Night Thunder” presented by Westin Packaged Meats and Schmidt’s Sanitation. The reigning series champ out of Minden, Nevada, relentlessly hassled Tyler Thomas for the race lead throughout the first half of the 40-lap main event. On the 25th lap, Thorson made the winning move with a successful turn four slider on Thomas and, from there, never relinquished the point to capture his first USAC National Midget feature victory of 2017.
The 21-year-old hadn’t won in the series since tearing off a three-race win streak in October of 2016 to propel him to his first USAC title. Tuesday night’s victory was the first for Thorson in nearly 10 months. Furthermore, his win in his Keith Kunz-Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/JBL Audio – TRD/Bullet by Spike/Speedway Toyota was the latest in the season a defending USAC National Midget champion has gone before scoring his first win since Jerry Coons, Jr. in 2008.
Patience speaks many languages and Thorson was able to transcribe them into a sweet song during the 40-lap main event, ten laps longer than the norm. As Thomas broke away for the lead, Thorson knew he had the car and the ability as well as the inclination that traffic would most likely come into play, so he waited until the race came to him.
“When I got close to Tyler (Thomas) in the beginning part of the race, I knew it was still pretty early,” Thorson recalls. “I just wanted to be in ride mode. He ended up pulling away from me for a little bit. We ended up running him back down because of lapped traffic. We’re not used to having these longer races, so ten more laps are a little bit different and it’s a little bit harder. More laps definitely played into our favor instead of us trying to go all out at once at the beginning part of the race.”
Yet, outside front row starter Thomas appeared to be under control as he ripped the top to secure the top spot early on. From the outset, though, Thorson was never too far in the background as he took a gamble to try and slide Thomas numerous times, coming up snake eyes on each occasion, including on lap nine when Thomas slipped over the turn four cushion in lapped traffic. Thorson was there, but not quite close enough to wrap the horseshoe around the stake.
For Thomas, conservation was not a viable option. As soon as he pushed off for the start of the feature and gassed it the first time, he noticed an off-kilter sound that was out of the ordinary. As it turned out, his engine was down a cylinder. Behind the eight-ball before the green flag, Thomas felt that, despite the extended distance, preserving equipment while racing in the lead was not in the plans.
Despite the mechanical bugaboo, by the 15th lap, Thomas held a 1.7 second lead over Thorson as he bid to become the second-straight driver to win his first career USAC National Midget feature at Jefferson County Speedway in as many years. A freight train of cars rode the rails at the top of the one-fifth-mile as they entered lapped traffic, making it a challenge to simply throttle past a fellow competitor and, instead, required alternate railways to make a clean pass.
“The way the track was, it was really fast around the top compared to the bottom,” Thorson explained. “If you left the groove, it was hard to get back up into it without getting into somebody. I was trying to be very careful and respectful without getting into Tyler. I don’t like racing that way. We just played it patient. He ran into some lapped traffic and then we were lucky enough to get a yellow. That definitely saved us.”
Thomas, on the other hand, wasn’t as delighted to see the yellow. In many cases, a yellow for a leader working through lapped traffic is a blessing as it provides an open highway without an obstacle in sight. Nonetheless, for Thomas, the obstacle lied under his hood, making each ensuing restart a chore.
“That first long run we had, we were good,” Thomas remembers. “I kept my momentum up around the top and didn’t really have any pressure behind me. The yellows really killed me because I couldn’t restart well. Once I got to the top, I just didn’t have the power to pull out of it. I wasn’t sure if I needed to slide myself or just get to the cushion. I don’t think it mattered. I didn’t have the power to pull myself out of anything.”
“I had to push it a little harder,” Thorson exclaimed. “I have a tendency of getting in there a little soft when I throw slide jobs. I don’t feel like wrecking and I don’t want to wreck anybody else. On the restart, he didn’t quite get going because of his motor. We had a pretty good run going down the front stretch and I was able to break his momentum a little bit and then we were able to get a run coming off of four once again the next lap. I just had to push it off in there. We’re all here to win, so you have to use up as much space as you can.” – Tanner Thorson
(Lonnie Wheatley Photo)

Following a lap 24 caution for the stopped car of Justin Grant, Thorson knew he couldn’t be shackled much longer. Despite his self-described habits when attempting sliders, Thorson went to school throughout the first half of the race and realized what he needed to do. The moment was his this time around and he wasn’t going to let this one slip away.

“I had to push it a little harder,” Thorson exclaimed. “I have a tendency of getting in there a little soft when I throw slide jobs. I don’t feel like wrecking and I don’t want to wreck anybody else. On the restart, he didn’t quite get going because of his motor. We had a pretty good run going down the front stretch and I was able to break his momentum a little bit and then we were able to get a run coming off of four once again the next lap. I just had to push it off in there. We’re all here to win, so you have to use up as much space as you can.”
After multiple cautions, the lap 30 restart saw Golobic take advantage of Thomas’s disadvantage, sliding him for the second spot into turn one. Meanwhile, Thorson checked out to a half-straightaway lead and held strong.
The battle for third heated up with Thomas and Bacon exchanging slide jobs at opposite ends of the track on five consecutive occasions from laps 35 to 37 until a caution set up a three-lap sprint to the finish. With the number of sliders that were thrown by Thorson himself during the race, he wasn’t going to allow himself to be the slidee this time as he entered through the middle of turn one before sliding up to the cushion, thus preventing Golobic from having a clean look.
“You don’t want anybody to get the leading edge on you by getting to the bottom and throwing a slider like the one I used to get by Tyler,” Thorson explained. “I was kind of cheating the entry and sliding myself. The cushion got kind of hard to run coming off turn two. There was nothing there and, all of a sudden, it showed up. It definitely helped entering a little bit below there and we were able to get a run going down the straightaway without my front end getting all twisted up. It was something I had to do just for my mind so I didn’t get up over the cushion. I knew there were only a few laps left and I was trying my hardest not to mess up. I did the same thing with turns three and four. The cushion started to move over farther and farther. That made it harder and harder to run. I had to do play a little defense, be patient and be really particular on how I ran the top.”
Thorson cemented his position at the front while the battle raged on for second. Brady Bacon advanced from fourth to second past Thomas and Golobic in a rapid-fire, furious charge while Thomas found a second wind in the engine to get third back from Golobic on the final lap.
None of that action concerned Thorson, though, as he nailed down his 11th career USAC National Midget victory over Bacon, Thomas, Shane Golobic and Christopher Bell.
Runner-up Brady Bacon of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma cherished each opportunity the restarts presented in his FMR Racing/Brown & Miller Racing Solutions – Black Watch Farms/Beast/Toyota, helping him to his third consecutive top-two finish in USAC National competition over the last four days.
“All the restarts at the end helped,” Bacon admits. “Everyone was getting a little tighter and tighter on the top and I was trying the bottom in one and two because I knew they were going to start sliding each other on the restarts or get tight. I knew I could be on a clear lane by myself down at the bottom. It just kept working better and better and better. The bottom in three kept getting cleaner so I could slide further. If it wasn’t for those yellows at the end, it would’ve been pretty hard for me to pass.”
Collinsville, Oklahoma’s Tyler Thomas led 24 laps and earned a solid third-place finish in his Keith Kunz-Curb-Agajanian Motorsports/JBL Audio – TRD/Bullet by Spike/Speedway Toyota. Yet, unlike his counterpart Brady Bacon, Thomas didn’t see much personal benefit with the cautions.
“That last late restart really hurt me,” Thomas acknowledges. “I knew Brady was quick. He made the bottom work, but to get (Brady or Shane), I just had to wait for them to screw up. When they both went to the bottom in turn one, that opened up a door for me to get a run and I was able to get around Shane in three and four on the last lap.”
Contingency award winners Tuesday night at Jefferson County Speedway include Chad Boat (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Tucker Klaasmeyer (Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Jerry Coons, Jr. (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner & KSE Racing Products Hard Charger), Christopher Bell (Chalk Stix 3rd Heat Winner), Tanner Thorson (Indy Race Parts 4th Heat Winner) and Tanner Carrick (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: August 1, 2017 – Fairbury, Nebraska – Jefferson County Speedway – Riverside Chevrolet “TuesdayNight Thunder” presented by Westin Packaged Meats & Schmidt’s Sanitation
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Chad Boat, 84, Tucker/Boat-11.105 (New Track Record); 2. Justin Grant, 39BC, Clauson/Marshall-11.149; 3. Brady Bacon, 76m, FMR-11.155; 4. Tanner Thorson, 67, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-11.305; 5. Tyler Thomas, 91T, Thomas-11.344; 6. Shane Golobic, 17w, Clauson-Marshall/Wood-11.432; 7. Christopher Bell, 21, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-11.457; 8. Spencer Bayston, 97, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-11.475; 9. Tyler Courtney, 7BC, Clauson/Marshall-11.508; 10. Ryan Robinson, 71, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-11.528; 11. Holly Shelton, 67K, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-11.528; 12. Tanner Carrick, 71K, Kunz/Curb-Agajanian-11.577; 13. Tucker Klaasmeyer, 27, Klaasmeyer-11.625; 14. Jerry Coons, Jr., 25, Petry/Goff-11.633; 15. Chett Gehrke, 11c, Matteson-11.647; 16. Brayton Lynch, 1K, RKR-11.817; 17. Paul Babich, 69, Hamilton/Halarr-11.913; 18. John Klabunde, 77J, Klabunde-11.948; 19. Clinton Boyles, 98, Boyles-12.050; 20. Troy Simpson, 7, Hamilton-12.055; 21. Tyler Nelson, 47, Mason-12.056; 22. Joe B. Miller, 7u, Trifecta-12.085; 23. Lance Bennett, 10, Bennett-12.100; 24. Jeff Stasa, 91s, SBR-12.126; 25. Collin Rinehart, 20, Rinehart-12.205; 26. Bob Harr, 2, Hamilton/Halarr-12.214; 27. Matt Johnson, 85, Central-12.254; 28. Glenn Waterland, 11cw, Waterland-12.668; 29. Terry Goodwin, 2G, Goodwin-12.719; 30. Ryan Oerter, 43, RKO-12.759; 31. Randy Oerter, 48, RKO-13.116; 32. Ashley Oerter, 16, RKO-14.038; 33. Jeff Crook, 5J, Crook-NT.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Klaasmeyer, 2. Thomas, 3. Boat, 4. Courtney, 5. Nelson, 6. Babich, 7. Rinehart, 8. Goodwin. NT
COMPETITION SUSPENSION, INC. (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Coons, 2. Golobic, 3. Grant, 4. Robinson, 5. Harr, 6. Klabunde, 7. Miller, 8. Ry. Oerter. NT
CHALK STIX THIRD HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Bell, 2. Bacon, 3. Shelton, 4. Boyles, 5. Gehrke, 6. Johnson, 7. Ra. Oerter. 2:00.16 (New Track Record)
INDY RACE PARTS FOURTH HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Thorson, 2. Bayston, 3. Carrick, 4. Lynch, 5. Stasa, 6. Simpson, 7. Waterland, 8. A. Oerter. NT
SEMI: (12 laps) 1. Gehrke, 2. Miller, 3. Nelson, 4. Babich, 5. Harr, 6. Stasa, 7. Klabunde, 8. Simpson, 9. Goodwin, 10. Waterland, 11. Ra. Oerter, 12. Rinehart, 13. A. Oerter, 14. Johnson, 15. Ry. Oerter. NT
FEATURE: (40 laps) 1. Tanner Thorson, 2. Brady Bacon, 3. Tyler Thomas, 4. Shane Golobic, 5. Christopher Bell, 6. Spencer Bayston, 7. Tyler Courtney, 8. Jerry Coons, Jr., 9. Ryan Robinson, 10. Tucker Klaasmeyer, 11. Chad Boat, 12. Holly Shelton, 13. Tanner Carrick, 14. Joe B. Miller, 15. Clinton Boyles, 16. Brayton Lynch, 17. Chett Gehrke, 18. Paul Babich, 19. Jeff Stasa, 20. John Klabunde, 21. Tyler Nelson, 22. Justin Grant. NT
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**Harr flipped as he crossed the finish line during the semi.
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-24 Thomas, Laps 25-40 Thorson.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Jerry Coons, Jr. (14th to 8th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Tanner Carrick
NEW USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Bayston-833, 2-Bacon-819, 3-Golobic-819, 4-Courtney-775, 5-Grant-750, 6-Thorson-720, 7-Coons-646, 8-Boat-561, 9-Thomas-548, 10-Robinson-535.
NEXT USAC MIDGET NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: August 2 – Beloit, Kansas – Solomon Valley Raceway – “Chad McDaniel Memorial”

SANTOS TAMES TOLEDO HIGHBANKS IN “ROLLIE BEALE CLASSIC”

FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2017
With Friday night’s “Rollie Beale Classic” Silver Crown victory, Bobby Santos (Left) became the first driver to win a USAC Silver Crown, National Sprint and National Midget feature in a career at Toledo Speedway.
Race sponsor, Ron Hemelgarn (Right).
(Rich Forman Photo)
SANTOS TAMES TOLEDO HIGHBANKS
IN “ROLLIE BEALE CLASSIC”
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Toledo, Ohio………Bobby Santos’ golden reputation as a racer has been well-established and well-earned.
From open wheel cars, to full-bodied stock cars to modifieds, the Franklin, Massachusetts native has driven them all and tamed them all at one point or another in his masterful career.
In Friday night’s Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness “Rollie Beale Classic,” the 31-year-old driver had a single pin left standing in his lane on the way to cementing his diverse capabilities behind the wheel, if you ever doubted him for any reason.
After notching previous USAC National victories at Toledo Speedway in a Sprint Car (2006) and a Midget (2009), Santos completed the triple threat by winning his first Silver Crown event at the half-mile paved oval, thus becoming the 20th driver ever to win features in all of USAC‘s three current national series at a single track.
Even more striking is that he had already accomplished the feat once before at Brownsburg, Indiana’s Lucas Oil Raceway, casting him into an even more exclusive club of individuals who’ve done the deed at multiple venues such as Dave Darland, Jack Hewitt, Tracy Hines and Dave Steele.
To get there, though, Santos had to do something that isn’t a regular occurrence at Toledo, let alone anywhere for that matter. He had to pass two-time USAC Silver Crown Champ Car Series presented by TRAXXAS champion Kody Swanson. No small chore considering the two previous instances Swanson started from the pole in a Silver Crown car at Toledo, in 2011 and 2015, he led every single lap, all 250 of them, on his way to a pair of commanding wins.
Santos would start this year’s edition alongside Swanson from the outside of the front row. Swanson set the tone early, emerging with the lead by a half-car length at the line following a first lap that went entirely wheel-to-wheel for a full revolution.
Lapped traffic would prove to play a pivotal role throughout the 100-lap stretch and, by lap nine, the leaders had already encroached the tail end of the field. Swanson’s breakaway would be stifled early on when he encountered a nest of cars that slowed his roll, allowing Santos and Chris Windom to shred the interval and close to within a heartbeat of the two-time champ as the top-three runners separated themselves as the main contenders.
A third of the way through, the top-three bobbed and weaved inside and outside the lappers with Swanson assuming the role of maestro and orchestrating his own destiny by attacking the pack with authority as Santos and Windom trailed in hot pursuit.
Just prior to the halfway mark, on lap 45, Swanson got hung up while lapping David Byrne, leaving him with a split-second decision to make. Which lane to choose?
“We were pretty good in the first third of it,” Swanson remembered. “About 15 laps in, I was starting to hang sideways a little off the corner and I felt like I was in trouble. I survived a few of the lapped cars just by choosing the right lane. Byrne was just fast enough to make it a tough choice. I turned to go down under him and it hung sideways off turn two. I knew I was a sitting duck after that. He had the momentum and was able to clear me for the lead.”
Meanwhile, Santos saw the opportunity he had been anticipating and this was a chance he wasn’t going to pass up as he charged to the outside of Byrne in the gray midway down the back straightaway while Swanson simultaneously weed-whacked the edge of the infield grass underneath Byrne.
“It was just circumstance,” Santos assured. “We had a good car on the run and I felt we were making progress the longer it went. We just got to the point where we were going to work him over and pass him. The opportunity just kind of popped up when we needed it and that’s what it’s all about. You must put yourself in the right position when opportunities arise.”
Santos then kicked it up another notch and left Swanson and Windom to battle amongst themselves for second as he constructed a two-second lead over the next 25-plus laps. Windom’s engine began to leave a trail of smoke, but his speed was unhampered as he applied constant pressure to Swanson.

“It was just circumstance,” Santos assured. “We had a good car on the run and I felt we were making progress the longer it went. We just got to the point where we were going to work him over and pass him. The opportunity just kind of popped up when we needed it and that’s what it’s all about. You must put yourself in the right position when opportunities arise.”
– Rollie Beale Classic winner Bobby Santos.
(Rich Forman Photo)
With 13 laps remaining, Santos maintained a healthy advantage, yet what lie ahead had him sweating a bit when RPM/Gormly teammates Joe Liguori and Davey Hamilton battled side-by-side for the fifth position with the leaders on their heels. Santos was forced to check up as he deciphered which avenue to make his escape, which played into the favor of Swanson and Windom who both caught up to Santos as the three ran nose-to-tail inside 10 laps to go.
That left Santos with one thought as he studied his next move, but he’s experienced enough in this sport to know that racing can giveth, yet it can taketh away just as easily.
“Get out of the way,” Santos said with a laugh. “Lapped traffic made it hard on us, but that’s part of racing. That’s the way it goes. The lapped traffic gave us an opportunity when we took the lead from Kody just as it did at the end of the race for Kody.”
It took half a race for Santos to build up a two second lead and just three laps for it all to evaporate, but Santos remained unfazed and, in a two-lap succession, disposed of both Hamilton and Liguori for a little separation and relative comfort.
The rapid pace would be dialed down when the first and only caution of the night fell on lap 97 for series rookie Troy Thompson who slid sideways to a stop on the front straightaway, necessitating a green-white-checkered finish. The caution certainly benefitted Santos more than it did Swanson, and though Santos felt he had Swanson covered at that point regardless, he wasn’t too unpleased about the timing of it.
“At that point, I had finally cleared the lapped cars and it, at least, gave us a chance to catch our breath and get ready for the last two laps,” Santos recalls. “Usually, the guy in second has the advantage in lapped traffic, but after the yellow, we had a clear track from there on out. I knew if I hit my marks, /we had a good shot at it.”
Santos was on his marks and set for victory when the green flag flew for the final two-lap sprint, gaining a few car lengths to his advantage right off the bat. Swanson tried with all his might to set himself up to make a move to no avail as Santos peeled away for his third Silver Crown of the season, and second in a span of nine days, over Swanson, Windom, Jerry Coons, Jr. and Joe Liguori. It was Santos’ ninth career Silver Crown victory, tying him with Tracy Hines for 12th on the all-time list.
Series point leader Kody Swanson of Kingsburg, California took second in his DePalma Motorsports/Radio Hospital – Hampshire Racing Engines/Beast/Hampshire despite fighting an ill-handling car that the crew continued to tweak and adjust all throughout the night.
“We were fastest in practice and fastest in qualifying, but we were really only good for the first lap,” Swanson explains. “I knew we were in trouble the longer it was going to go, which isn’t our normal style, but that was just the way it was handling today. We don’t do this often, but even though we won the pole, we made changes before the feature and were able to make it better.”
“The longer it went, I tell you what, we just didn’t quit,” Swanson continued. “That’s why I like these 100-lap races. Maybe something will come to you. We caught that caution with three to go. I was setting up and really thought we had a shot to return the favor. When you’re the second guy into traffic, you have the benefit that the leader has to pick a lane and you can choose the other one and see if it works out. I was really hoping we’d have that chance at the end, but a caution kind of spoiled that. I sat up in the seat and gave it two hard laps to see if we could at least make him earn it.”
Defending series champion Chris Windom of Canton, Illinois captured his best finish on the hardtop in 2017, finishing third in his Kazmark Racing/Project Healing Waters – Remin Kart-A-Bag/Beast/Ford.
Contingency awards Friday night at Toledo Speedway included Kody Swanson (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Joe Axsom (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Joss Moffatt (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) RACE RESULTS: July 28, 2017 – Toledo, Ohio – Toledo Speedway – Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness “Rollie Beale Classic”

PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Kody Swanson, 63, DePalma-15.084; 2. Bobby Santos, 22, DJ Racing-15.187; 3. Aaron Pierce, 26, Pierce-15.306; 4. Chris Windom, 92, Kazmark-15.335; 5. David Byrne, 40, Byrne-15.338; 6. Jerry Coons Jr., 20, Nolen-15.368; 7. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn/Carli-15.420; 8. Joe Liguori, 98, RPM/Gormly-15.520; 9. Davey Hamilton, 99, RPM/Gormly-15.638; 10. Damion Gardner, 6, Klatt-15.736; 11. Joe Axsom, 120, Nolen-15.773; 12. Annie Breidinger, 80, Breidinger-16.191; 13. Matt Goodnight, 39, Goodnight-16.595; 14. Troy Thompson, 15, Thompson-16.598; 15. Joss Moffatt, 32, Williams & Wright-17.038; 16. Cody Gallogly, 81, Williams-NT.
FEATURE: (100 laps) 1. Bobby Santos, 2. Kody Swanson, 3. Chris Windom, 4. Jerry Coons Jr., 5. Joe Liguori, 6. Davey Hamilton, 7. Joe Axsom, 8. David Byrne, 9. Annie Breidinger, 10. Justin Grant, 11. Troy Thompson, 12. Aaron Pierce, 13. Joss Moffatt, 14. Damion Gardner, 15. Matt Goodnight. 28:48.16
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**Gallogly crashed into the outside barrier and flipped in turn three during practice.
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-44 Swanson, Laps 45-100 Santos.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER AWARD: Joe Axsom (11th to 7th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Joss Moffatt
NEW USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) POINTS: 1-K.Swanson-411, 2-Windom-354, 3-Coons-339, 4-Santos-286, 5-Byrne-286, 6-Pierce-236, 7-Grant-235, 8-Gardner-219, 9-Liguori-212. 10-Tanner Swanson-167.
NEXT USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) RACE: August 12 – Salem, Indiana – Salem Speedway – “Joe James/Pat O’Connor Memorial”

BACON TURNS IN K.C. MASTERPIECE AT LAKESIDE

SUNDAY, JULY 30, 2017
Brady Bacon celebrates in victory lane after winning Saturday night’s USACAMSOIL National Sprint Car feature at Lakeside Speedway
in Kansas City, Kansas.

(Rich Forman Photo)

BACON TURNS IN K.C. MASTERPIECE AT LAKESIDE

By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Kansas City, Kansas………One of the statistics bandied about in the week leading up toSaturday night’s USAC return to Lakeside Speedway was the fact that the most accomplished drivers in the sport, more often than not, seem to rise to the occasion when the venerable club visits the Kansas City, Kansas oval.
Coming into the event, 13 of the 17 drivers who had won USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car features at the old Lakeside Speedway half-mile and the newer Lakeside Speedway 4/10-mile were either USAC National champions or National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductees.
One of those names absent from the list entering the Saturday night was Broken Arrow, Oklahoma’s Brady Bacon. The two-time USAC National Sprint Car champ came within a lap of stamping his initials on that list in 2016. One year later, though, redemption was on his mind as he led all 30 laps to score his first triumph at Lakeside.
On the start, Bacon jumped ahead from the pole while third-place starter, young Riley Kreisel stepped into second. Right off the bat, though, a campfire broke out underneath the hood of Bacon’s ride as a trail of smoke clouded the sky behind him. No harm, no foul, though, as it was merely a little overflow spilling out of the oil tank. Bacon glanced down at the oil pressure gage and reassured that everything was perfectly fine from his vantage point.
As Bacon stretched his lead up front, series point leader Justin Grant had pedaled his way to second past Kreisel midway down the back straightaway on lap 12 and began to race his way toward Bacon, who had just begun to enter the toils of negotiating lapped traffic.
Bacon split between the lappers down low, around the outside and anywhere he could go to escape the net Grant had begun to cast. Grant chiseled away at the lead as the gap between he and leader Bacon sunk down to the closest margin it had been all race.
Suddenly, third-running Kreisel emerged from the exit of turn four on the 18th lap with a flat right front tire, ending a superb run for the young Missouri driver who had wowed the crowd with his dazzling, rim-riding performance through the first half of the event.
While the news for Kreisel and, to an extent, Grant, was sour times, Bacon was pleased with how the circumstances played out for himself as the seas were now parted and lapped traffic would no longer play a factor in the immediate future.
“We just got caught in a bad spot a couple times with the lapped cars,” Bacon explains. “A couple laps like that and they can really reel you in pretty fast. If we had reached an open track again, I think we would have been okay and probably pulled away, but it just kind of slowed everything down briefly.”
When racing resumed with 13 laps remaining, Bacon consistently clung to the top line as Grant searched low (turns 1 and 2), high (turns 3 and 4) and anywhere in between, but was unable to make up any significant ground.
“We got to where we weren’t catching him,” Grant remembers. “I started searching the racetrack trying to find something, anything that I could make work to get back to him. Running second is good and all, but you want to win these things. We were really good before the caution. We really fought air pressure under yellows and reds after that. The tires would get so low that when coming back to green, the frame rails were in the dirt and we’d start bucking around, which allowed Brady got away from us.”
Bacon’s momentum would be unheeded down the stretch and, after taking the white flag, appeared headed for certain victory. However, two-time Lakeside winner Robert Ballou had arrived in third and was engaged with Grant for the runner-up spot. The two made contact coming off turn four with Ballou and Grant making slight contact, scuffing each other as if they were competing in the chariot race from Ben Hur. Grant got squirrelly as he passed underneath the flagstand. Grant dove to the bottom of turn one while Ballou hopped onto the first turn cushion, which bounced him into the air and sent him into a series of pirouettes against the concrete wall. He was okay, but his race and a bid for a third Lakeside win in as many years was over.

“I was a little nervous at the beginning of the race.  We were really tight, but as it turned out, everyone else was pretty tight too. We were better at the end. I felt I had to keep my tires underneath me. You can lose a lot of speed if you start spinning them. I guess our hard gamble of being a little too tight
early paid off in the end.”
-Brady Bacon-
(Rich Forman Photo)
Under the red flag period, Bacon and Grant were amongst those pondering changes to be made. In the end, however, both made the decision to enter the final standoff playing the cards they had been dealt.
“I knew we were pretty well set,” a confident Bacon stated. “I knew we were going to lose a little tire pressure and didn’t want to tighten it up any because I knew the air was going to tighten us up anyway. I just tried to not make any mistakes on the last restart. I slipped a little bit off two on the first lap of the restart, but was able to keep it underneath me to get a decent run through turns three and four and get our speed back up.”
Grant was in a similar position, ultimately deciding to stand pat.
“I wanted to work on the shocks and tighten the thing up a little bit before the air pressure built up again on the restart,” Grant said. “But, I was afraid to do it with the tires being so low when we went back green. I was fighting the car as it was, but it probably would have been better off if I’d have tightened the car up with the shocks a little bit and just hung on for the first lap of the restart. I was timid about doing it. I didn’t want to turn the thing over on the restart!”
For the green-white-checkered two-lap sprint to the finish, Bacon knew what he had, but racing up front for the full duration of the event doesn’t allow a driver to see what his fellow competitors running behind him have up their respective sleeves.
“It’s definitely not ideal,” Bacon admits. “It felt like a really long race being up front. The whole time, you really don’t know what’s going on behind you and what everyone else is doing, but we were pretty good on the restarts, so I felt that as long as I didn’t stumble, or slip the tires, we’d be alright.”
Bacon held true to form, running the middle to top groove to gap Grant behind him, who was unable to make up any ground and was never close enough to set up a final move on him for the win. Bacon sealed the deal with his 19th career series win (26th all-time) just a tick under a second over Grant, Chris Windom, Chase Stockon and Tyler Courtney.
Bacon admitted that he anticipated the track getting hard and slick after his hot lap session to begin the night. But, as time wore on, the track continually got faster and faster with new one-lap and eight-lap track records being established in the preliminary events. Bacon’s car remained mostly tight from start-to-finish after attempts to free it up, but ultimately, the car was performing its best at the end.
“I was a little nervous at the beginning of the race,” Bacon admits. “We were really tight, but as it turned out, everyone else was pretty tight too. We were better at the end. I felt I had to keep my tires underneath me. You can lose a lot of speed if you start spinning them. I guess our hard gamble of being a little too tight early paid off in the end.”
Twenty-four hours after competing in a pavement 100-lap USAC Silver Crown race 736 miles away in Toledo, Ohio, Grant was behind the wheel of a completely different animal at Lakeside. As the only driver in USAC to have full-time rides in each of its three national divisions, Grant has found out just how rigorous it truly is, but the Ione, California native has found a way to adapt.
“We’ve been on the road a lot this year,” Grant acknowledges. “I’m running a lot heavier schedule than I’m used to. I’m starting to settle in and get used to it now. I’ve been leaning on some people that have run heavy schedules like this before and getting advice on what I need to be doing to keep myself sharp. Earlier in the year, I think I was starting to get a little worn down just with all the travelling and being away from home and everything, but I feel good now and I’m loving it. I think part of its adapting and part of it is just making sure that when you have a moment to rest or a moment of quiet time, you take it. That’s what I’ve been told to do, so that’s what I do and it’s been helping a lot.”
Along with Grant, Chris Windom of Canton, Illinois was the only other driver to successfully tackle the challenge of the Toledo/Lakeside double. Though admittedly a bit sore after a physically-demanding two-day stretch, Windom collected a pair of third-place finishes in two settings that were nearly polar opposites of each other.
“Those two cars are completely different animals,” Windom, Lakeside’s KSE Racing Product Hard Charger, pointed out. “Tonight was fast right up on the wall and it was a tough track to pass on. If you missed a slide job or didn’t clear a guy, you’d lose a lot of momentum. I think we were about a third-place car, which is where we ended up. I’ll take it, especially coming from ninth.”
Contingency award winners Saturday at Lakeside Speedway include Chase Stockon (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Kevin Thomas, Jr. (Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Justin Grant (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner), Robert Ballou (Chalk Stix/Indy Race Parts 3rd Heat Winner), Chris Windom (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Patrick Budde (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: July 30, 2017 – Kansas City, Kansas – Lakeside Speedway
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Chase Stockon, 32, 32 TBI-16.438 (New Track Record); 2. Justin Grant, 11, McGhee-16.597; 3. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-16.751; 4. Riley Kreisel, 90, Smith-16.809; 5. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-16.851; 6. Brady Bacon, 63, Dooling/Hayward-16.851; 7. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 9K, KT-16.994; 8. Jarett Andretti, 18, Andretti-17.049; 9. Chris Windom, 5, Baldwin-17.161; 10. Tyler Courtney, 23c, TOPP-17.168; 11. Chad Boespflug, 69, Dynamics-17.239; 12. Josh Hodges, 74x, Hodges-17.444; 13. Ryan Kitchen, 21, Kitchen-17.654; 14. Brandon Stevenson, 0, Stevenson-17.657; 15. Rob Caho, Jr., 78, Caho-17.898; 16. Steve Thomas, 20, Thomas-18.025; 17. Patrick Budde, 90x, Budde-18.462; 18. Terry Richards, 18R, Richards-18.843; 19. Robert Bell, 71, Bell-18.866; 20. Mike Sosebee, 50LP, Sosebee-NT; 21. Chris Morgan, 81A, Goams-NT.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (8 laps) 1. K. Thomas, 2. Stockon, 3. Courtney, 4. Kreisel, 5. Kitchen, 6. S. Thomas, 7. Bell. 2:17.79
COMPETITION SUSPENSION (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Grant, 2. Leary, 3. Andretti, 4. Boespflug, 5. Stevenson, 6. Budde. 2:17.84
CHALK STIX/INDY RACE PARTS THIRD HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Ballou, 2. Bacon, 3. Windom, 4. Hodges, 5. Caho, 6. Richards. 2:17.20 (New Track Record)
FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. Brady Bacon, 2. Justin Grant, 3. Chris Windom, 4. Chase Stockon, 5. Tyler Courtney, 6. C.J. Leary, 7. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 8. Josh Hodges, 9. Jarett Andretti, 10. Chad Boespflug, 11. Brandon Stevenson, 12. Robert Ballou, 13. Patrick Budde, 14. Rob Caho, Jr., 15. Terry Richards, 16. Robert Bell, 17. Steve Thomas, 18. Riley Kreisel, 19. Mike Sosebee, 20. Ryan Kitchen. NT
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FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-30 Bacon
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Chris Windom (9th to 3rd)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Patrick Budde
NEW USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Grant-1440, 2-Windom-1407, 3-Boespflug-1281, 4-K. Thomas-1259, 5-Stockon-1233, 6-Courtney-1232, 7-Leary-1082, 8-Bacon-991, 9-Dave Darland-937, 10-Thomas Meseraull-932.
NEXT USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: July 30 – Moberly, Missouri – Randolph County Raceway

PERFECT SUNSHINE NIGHT FOR COURTNEY IN MOBERLY’S USAC RETURN

MONDAY, JULY 31, 2017
Tyler Courtney celebrates victory in the USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Cars’ first visit to Randolph County Raceway in Moberly, Missouri since 1989.
(Rich Forman Photo)
PERFECT SUNSHINE NIGHT FOR COURTNEY
IN MOBERLY’S USAC RETURN
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Moberly, Missouri………Over the course of 140-plus years of Major League Baseball, there’ve been 23 different pitchers who’ve thrown a perfect game. The perfect 300 bowling game is celebrated as one of the highest achievements in all of sport. A few times per year, you’ll hear of an NFL quarterback who scored a perfect 158.3 rating.
Less heralded is the perfect race. There’s so many variables, obstacles and outside influences in auto racing that can play interference on each corner and each lap, it’s nearly impossible to accomplish. Plus, in auto racing, there are no points systems or judges to determine what a “perfect” score is.
In a 30-lap USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car race, perfection is an expectation. On Sunday night in the series’ first trip to Randolph County Raceway since 1989, Tyler Courtney was just about as perfect as you can be, staving off pressure from Brady Bacon down the stretch to win his third series feature of the year.
“Racing with the guys we race with night-in and night-out, you’ve got to be perfect for 30 laps,” Courtney explained. “I was able to minimize mistakes tonight. When you’re on the pole, you’re the guy being chased. You have to put that in the back of your mind and go out and run your race and put 30 laps together.”
It was a treacherous beginning at the front as pole sitter Courtney gained the initial advantage running the high line. Inside second row starter Chris Windom pulled into second and dove to the bottom in turn three, momentarily holding onto a one car length lead when his orange No. 5 biked on entry, then landed on all fours before digging in on the left rear and barrel-rolling three-and-a-half times over the concrete wall. Fortunately, Windom was able to climb from the car and walk away from the scene uninjured, but the incident certainly proved detrimental to his championship hopes with a 20th place result.
When racing resumed, Courtney headed for the bottom in turns one and two while Leary manhandled the top. Conversely, in turns three and four, Courtney aimed for the top as Leary followed suit. While it was in the original plans to run different lines on each end of the track, Courtney acknowledged that Windom’s incident confirmed his notion to run up against the wall in turns three and four.
“That was my original plan and I stuck to it for as long as I could until I felt like I had to change,” Courtney admitted. “Once I saw the start of Chris’s flip, I knew there had to be something evil down there. All night, the top of (turns) three and four had been really fast and we were able to carry our momentum. One and two was kind of a crap shoot. You had to move around a little bit and I knew the bottom was going to be good for a while with the kind of moisture that was down there. I ran down there in one and two for a while and saw Brady (Bacon) challenge me in (turns) three and four, so I changed it up and went to the top in one and two and was able to pull away from him a bit”
As Courtney maintained a roughly eight-car-length advantage by the fifth lap, second-running Leary tested the waters on the bottom of turn three himself when setting up a slider on Courtney for the lead. Similarly to Windom, Leary biked, but was able to gather it up and continue on. That opened the door for Saturday night Lakeside winner Brady Bacon to pounce and he momentarily grabbed second from Leary at the line. Leary regained his grip and hit the top once again in turns one and two to race back around Bacon to regain the second spot.
As the leaders worked their way through lapped traffic on the 11th lap, Leary got hung up behind a lapper and dove low into turn three to get by, but Bacon saw an opening and was able to do the Limbo Rock even lower than Leary to take second. Though, unlike a few others, Bacon’s maneuver against the inside wall of turn three looked smooth as silk, but it wasn’t as easy as he made it look.
“The car was tightened up to run the top of the racetrack, but the way the transition of the banking is down on the bottom, it would slam you right into that banking and it would upset your car,” Bacon explained.
Sunday night, Tyler Courtney scored his fourth USAC National win in 2017 at a track he was visiting for the first time in his career (Sprint: I-80 Speedway in Nebraska & Randolph County Raceway in Missouri.  Midget: Montpelier (Ind.) Motor Speedway & the Illinois State Fairgrounds Multi-Purpose Arena).
(Rich Forman Photo)

Following a restart just prior to the halfway mark, Bacon was able to take a peek underneath Courtney for the race lead heading into turn three, to no avail. Courtney took note and altered his game plan.

“I made a couple of adjustments on the shocks and moved my line to the top of one and two and started doing a little diamond move,” Courtney detailed. “Once I felt like there wasn’t any pressure, I still kept doing what I was doing and had to really pay attention to the noises around me. You always have to be looking ahead of you, though. There was a lot of lapped traffic tonight, but it’s how these races go. You’re racing against professional racecar drivers like Brady who run 100 races a year in every type of car. He sees a lot night-in, night-out.”
Down the stretch, Courtney and Bacon encountered numerous lapped cars, but each time, the pair escaped without issue. With two laps remaining, though, 13th running Rob Caho, Jr. was running the leaders’ preferred line up top. With Bacon on the chase, any slip up would be costly and Courtney had to be wary. In a fast-paced race, you have to make on-the-fly decisions and Courtney was prepared.
“The closing rate is really fast here,” Courtney explained. “I knew he was going to be running the top. I just backed my entry up a little bit and had to make sure I wasn’t going to run over the top of him coming off the corner. I just set myself up to slide him or go to the bottom in one and two and was able to clear him for the last time. You always take a deep breath once you get by a lapped car because you know the guy behind you has to deal with him next and you can get back to racing your own race.”
Courtney, using the lapped car as a buffer between he and Bacon, used the opportunity to escape from the pressure and close out his fourth USAC National win in 2017 at a track he was visiting for the first time in his career (Sprint: I-80 Speedway in Nebraska & Randolph County Raceway in Missouri.  Midget: Montpelier (Ind.) Motor Speedway & the Illinois State Fairgrounds Multi-Purpose Arena). Brady Bacon took second ahead of Justin Grant, Robert Ballou and Kevin Thomas, Jr.
That statistic emphasizes that Courtney, of Indianapolis, Indiana, is a quick study and one who is able to adapt to changing situations. After the track rework between qualifying and the heats, new lines opened up and Courtney took notice.
“It’s very similar to Lawrenceburg and I-80 too, so it didn’t take too long to adapt,” Courtney compared. “This place is a high-speed momentum place. It changed a lot from the beginning to the end. We weren’t even touching the bottom at the beginning of the night. Having to adapt to run the bottom, it’s just something that’s part of the job. You have to figure out when to do it and when not to do it. Tonight, we made the right moves at the right time.”
Bacon, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma had two successful nights in the heartland in his Dooling-Hayward Motorsports/B & H Contractors – Dooling Machine/Spike/Stanton Mopar, finishing first and second in two USAC Sprint Car appearances this weekend.
“He was a little better than us,” Bacon acknowledged. “We got close that one time, but we just didn’t have a lot of grip on exit. We blistered our tires pretty early and it just wasn’t our night. A couple times, we could get a good run and other times, not as much. Tyler never made a mistake, even when we got to him. That’s how you win races. That’s how we won last night.”
Ione, California’s Justin Grant extended his point lead to 79 over Windom with a third-place finish in his Sam McGhee Motorsports/ProGlide Bearings – Mike McGhee & Associates/Maxim/Foxco. But, at first, the point lead didn’t cross his mind as he saw his fellow competitor and friend exit the racetrack.
“My biggest worry was that Chris was hurt,” Grant said. “Sailing out of this place, you don’t know what’s on the other side of those banks. (Crew Chief) Sam (McGhee) ran out on the track under that red flag to work on the car and I asked, ‘Is he all right.’ Sam said, ‘I don’t know.’ I said ‘Well, go down and check on him.’ Sam came back and said he was okay and that made me feel a whole lot better.”
Once Grant found out about Windom’s well-being, he admits that he couldn’t help but think about the points race and how he could capitalize.
“It’s definitely in the back of your mind,” Grant stated. “You never want to see a guy turn over, especially since Chris is a buddy of mine. You hate that for him, but at the same time, it’s a good time to capitalize on points. We wanted to win but when you get an opportunity like that to gain a bunch of points, you try not to throw it away. I wanted to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes that would cost us a bunch. I felt like we did a good job to take advantage of that.”
Contingency award winners Sunday at Randolph County Raceway include Justin Grant (ProSource Fast Qualifier & Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Kevin Thomas, Jr. (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner), Brady Bacon (Chalk Stix/Indy Race Parts 3rd Heat Winner), Riley Kreisel (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Rob Caho, Jr. (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: July 30, 2017 – Moberly, Missouri – Randolph County Raceway
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Justin Grant, 11, McGhee-16.721; 2. Chase Stockon, 32, 32 TBI-16.898; 3. Brady Bacon, 63, Dooling/Hayward-16.914; 4. Chris Windom, 5, Baldwin-16.994; 5. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-17.021; 6. Tyler Courtney, 23c, TOPP-17.164; 7. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-17.176; 8. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 9K, KT-17.300; 9. Jarett Andretti, 18, Andretti-17.307; 10. Chad Boespflug, 69, Dynamics-17.431; 11. Josh Hodges, 74x, Hodges-17.789; 12. Wyatt Burks, 11w, Rumsey-17.928; 13. Katlynn Leer, 77K, Leer-18.526; 14. Michael Moore, 21m, M3 Racing-18.695; 15. Riley Kreisel, 90, Smith-19.028; 16. Patrick Budde, 90x, Budde-19.046; 17. Steve Thomas, 20, Thomas-19.232; 18. Warren Johnson, 42, Johnson-19.271; 19. Rob Caho, Jr., 78, Caho-19.500; 20. Robert Bell, 71, Bell-19.582.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Grant, 2. Ballou, 3. Windom, 4. Boespflug, 5. Caho, 6. Leer, 7. Budde. 2:22.22
COMPETITION SUSPENSION (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (8 laps) 1. K. Thomas, 2. Stockon, 3. Hodges, 4. Leary, 5. S. Thomas, 6. Moore, 7. Bell. 2:21.64
CHALK STIX/INDY RACE PARTS THIRD HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Bacon, 2. Kreisel, 3. Courtney, 4. Andretti, 5. Burks, 6. Johnson. 2:23.12
FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. Tyler Courtney, 2. Brady Bacon, 3. Justin Grant, 4. Robert Ballou, 5. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 6. Chad Boespflug, 7. Chase Stockon, 8. Josh Hodges, 9. Riley Kreisel, 10. Jarett Andretti, 11. C.J. Leary, 12. Wyatt Burks, 13. Rob Caho, Jr., 14. Patrick Budde, 15. Steve Thomas, 16. Robert Bell, 17. Katlynn Leer, 18. Michael Moore, 19. Warren Johnson, 20. Chris Windom. NT
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FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-30 Courtney
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Riley Kreisel (15th to 9th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Rob Caho, Jr.
NEW USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Grant-1518, 2-Windom-1439, 3-Boespflug-1341, 4-K. Thomas-1325, 5-Courtney-1309, 6-Stockon-1297, 7-Leary-1130, 8-Bacon-1070, 9-Ballou-971, 10-Andretti-955.
NEXT USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: August 23-26 – Kokomo, Indiana – Kokomo Speedway – “Sprint Car Smackdown VI”

USAC – Silver Crown – SANTOS TAMES TOLEDO HIGHBANKS IN “ROLLIE BEALE CLASSIC”

SANTOS TAMES TOLEDO HIGHBANKS
IN “ROLLIE BEALE CLASSIC”
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media

Toledo, Ohio………Bobby Santos’ golden reputation as a racer has been well-established and well-earned.
From open wheel cars, to full-bodied stock cars to modifieds, the Franklin, Massachusetts native has driven them all and tamed them all at one point or another in his masterful career.
In Friday night’s Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness “Rollie Beale Classic,” the 31-year-old driver had a single pin left standing in his lane on the way to cementing his diverse capabilities behind the wheel, if you ever doubted him for any reason.
After notching previous USAC National victories at Toledo Speedway in a Sprint Car (2006) and a Midget (2009), Santos completed the triple threat by winning his first Silver Crown event at the half-mile paved oval, thus becoming the 20th driver ever to win features in all of USAC’s three current national series at a single track.
Even more striking is that he had already accomplished the feat once before at Brownsburg, Indiana’s Lucas Oil Raceway, casting him into an even more exclusive club of individuals who’ve done the deed at multiple venues such as Dave Darland, Jack Hewitt, Tracy Hines and Dave Steele.
To get there, though, Santos had to do something that isn’t a regular occurrence at Toledo, let alone anywhere for that matter. He had to pass two-time USAC Silver Crown Champ Car Series presented by TRAXXAS champion Kody Swanson. No small chore considering the two previous instances Swanson started from the pole in a Silver Crown car at Toledo, in 2011 and 2015, he led every single lap, all 250 of them, on his way to a pair of commanding wins.
Santos would start this year’s edition alongside Swanson from the outside of the front row. Swanson set the tone early, emerging with the lead by a half-car length at the line following a first lap that went entirely wheel-to-wheel for a full revolution.
Lapped traffic would prove to play a pivotal role throughout the 100-lap stretch and, by lap nine, the leaders had already encroached the tail end of the field. Swanson’s breakaway would be stifled early on when he encountered a nest of cars that slowed his roll, allowing Santos and Chris Windom to shred the interval and close to within a heartbeat of the two-time champ as the top-three runners separated themselves as the main contenders.
A third of the way through, the top-three bobbed and weaved inside and outside the lappers with Swanson assuming the role of maestro and orchestrating his own destiny by attacking the pack with authority as Santos and Windom trailed in hot pursuit.
Just prior to the halfway mark, on lap 45, Swanson got hung up while lapping David Byrne, leaving him with a split-second decision to make. Which lane to choose?
“We were pretty good in the first third of it,” Swanson remembered. “About 15 laps in, I was starting to hang sideways a little off the corner and I felt like I was in trouble. I survived a few of the lapped cars just by choosing the right lane. Byrne was just fast enough to make it a tough choice. I turned to go down under him and it hung sideways off turn two. I knew I was a sitting duck after that. He had the momentum and was able to clear me for the lead.”
Meanwhile, Santos saw the opportunity he had been anticipating and this was a chance he wasn’t going to pass up as he charged to the outside of Byrne in the gray midway down the back straightaway while Swanson simultaneously weed-whacked the edge of the infield grass underneath Byrne.
“It was just circumstance,” Santos assured. “We had a good car on the run and I felt we were making progress the longer it went. We just got to the point where we were going to work him over and pass him. The opportunity just kind of popped up when we needed it and that’s what it’s all about. You must put yourself in the right position when opportunities arise.”
Santos then kicked it up another notch and left Swanson and Windom to battle amongst themselves for second as he constructed a two-second lead over the next 25-plus laps. Windom’s engine began to leave a trail of smoke, but his speed was unhampered as he applied constant pressure to Swanson.

“It was just circumstance,” Santos assured. “We had a good car on the run and I felt we were making progress the longer it went. We just got to the point where we were going to work him over and pass him. The opportunity just kind of popped up when we needed it and that’s what it’s all about. You must put yourself in the right position when opportunities arise.”
– Rollie Beale Classic winner Bobby Santos.
(Provided by USAC – Rich Forman Photo)

With 13 laps remaining, Santos maintained a healthy advantage, yet what lie ahead had him sweating a bit when RPM/Gormly teammates Joe Liguori and Davey Hamilton battled side-by-side for the fifth position with the leaders on their heels. Santos was forced to check up as he deciphered which avenue to make his escape, which played into the favor of Swanson and Windom who both caught up to Santos as the three ran nose-to-tail inside 10 laps to go.
That left Santos with one thought as he studied his next move, but he’s experienced enough in this sport to know that racing can giveth, yet it can taketh away just as easily.
“Get out of the way,” Santos said with a laugh. “Lapped traffic made it hard on us, but that’s part of racing. That’s the way it goes. The lapped traffic gave us an opportunity when we took the lead from Kody just as it did at the end of the race for Kody.”
It took half a race for Santos to build up a two second lead and just three laps for it all to evaporate, but Santos remained unfazed and, in a two-lap succession, disposed of both Hamilton and Liguori for a little separation and relative comfort.
The rapid pace would be dialed down when the first and only caution of the night fell on lap 97 for series rookie Troy Thompson who slid sideways to a stop on the front straightaway, necessitating a green-white-checkered finish. The caution certainly benefitted Santos more than it did Swanson, and though Santos felt he had Swanson covered at that point regardless, he wasn’t too unpleased about the timing of it.
“At that point, I had finally cleared the lapped cars and it, at least, gave us a chance to catch our breath and get ready for the last two laps,” Santos recalls. “Usually, the guy in second has the advantage in lapped traffic, but after the yellow, we had a clear track from there on out. I knew if I hit my marks, /we had a good shot at it.”
Santos was on his marks and set for victory when the green flag flew for the final two-lap sprint, gaining a few car lengths to his advantage right off the bat. Swanson tried with all his might to set himself up to make a move to no avail as Santos peeled away for his third Silver Crown of the season, and second in a span of nine days, over Swanson, Windom, Jerry Coons, Jr. and Joe Liguori. It was Santos’ ninth career Silver Crown victory, tying him with Tracy Hines for 12th on the all-time list.
Series point leader Kody Swanson of Kingsburg, California took second in his DePalma Motorsports/Radio Hospital – Hampshire Racing Engines/Beast/Hampshire despite fighting an ill-handling car that the crew continued to tweak and adjust all throughout the night.
“We were fastest in practice and fastest in qualifying, but we were really only good for the first lap,” Swanson explains. “I knew we were in trouble the longer it was going to go, which isn’t our normal style, but that was just the way it was handling today. We don’t do this often, but even though we won the pole, we made changes before the feature and were able to make it better.”
“The longer it went, I tell you what, we just didn’t quit,” Swanson continued. “That’s why I like these 100-lap races. Maybe something will come to you. We caught that caution with three to go. I was setting up and really thought we had a shot to return the favor. When you’re the second guy into traffic, you have the benefit that the leader has to pick a lane and you can choose the other one and see if it works out. I was really hoping we’d have that chance at the end, but a caution kind of spoiled that. I sat up in the seat and gave it two hard laps to see if we could at least make him earn it.”
Defending series champion Chris Windom of Canton, Illinois captured his best finish on the hardtop in 2017, finishing third in his Kazmark Racing/Project Healing Waters – Remin Kart-A-Bag/Beast/Ford.
Contingency awards Friday night at Toledo Speedway included Kody Swanson (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Joe Axsom (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Joss Moffatt (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) RACE RESULTS: July 28, 2017 – Toledo, Ohio – Toledo Speedway – Hemelgarn Racing/Super Fitness “Rollie Beale Classic”

PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Kody Swanson, 63, DePalma-15.084; 2. Bobby Santos, 22, DJ Racing-15.187; 3. Aaron Pierce, 26, Pierce-15.306; 4. Chris Windom, 92, Kazmark-15.335; 5. David Byrne, 40, Byrne-15.338; 6. Jerry Coons Jr., 20, Nolen-15.368; 7. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn/Carli-15.420; 8. Joe Liguori, 98, RPM/Gormly-15.520; 9. Davey Hamilton, 99, RPM/Gormly-15.638; 10. Damion Gardner, 6, Klatt-15.736; 11. Joe Axsom, 120, Nolen-15.773; 12. Annie Breidinger, 80, Breidinger-16.191; 13. Matt Goodnight, 39, Goodnight-16.595; 14. Troy Thompson, 15, Thompson-16.598; 15. Joss Moffatt, 32, Williams & Wright-17.038; 16. Cody Gallogly, 81, Williams-NT.
FEATURE: (100 laps) 1. Bobby Santos, 2. Kody Swanson, 3. Chris Windom, 4. Jerry Coons Jr., 5. Joe Liguori, 6. Davey Hamilton, 7. Joe Axsom, 8. David Byrne, 9. Annie Breidinger, 10. Justin Grant, 11. Troy Thompson, 12. Aaron Pierce, 13. Joss Moffatt, 14. Damion Gardner, 15. Matt Goodnight. 28:48.16
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**Gallogly crashed into the outside barrier and flipped in turn three during practice.
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-44 Swanson, Laps 45-100 Santos.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER AWARD: Joe Axsom (11th to 7th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Joss Moffatt
NEW USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) POINTS: 1-K.Swanson-411, 2-Windom-354, 3-Coons-339, 4-Santos-286, 5-Byrne-286, 6-Pierce-236, 7-Grant-235, 8-Gardner-219, 9-Liguori-212. 10-Tanner Swanson-167.
NEXT USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) RACE: August 12 – Salem, Indiana – Salem Speedway – “Joe James/Pat O’Connor Memorial”

SANTOS RECLAIMS THRONE AT LOR’S “RICH VOGLER/USAC HALL OF FAME CLASSIC”

Bobby Santos (left) battles Tanner Swanson for the lead in Thursday night’s “Rich Vogler/USAC Hall of Fame Classic” at Lucas Oil Raceway.
(David Nearpass Photo)
SANTOS RECLAIMS THRONE AT LOR’S
“RICH VOGLER/USAC HALL OF FAME CLASSIC”
By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Brownsburg, Indiana………From 2006 through the early part of the 2010s, Lucas Oil Raceway was Bobby Santos’ jam. It was a place that had become special to the Franklin, Massachusetts driver, for it was there that he scored his first career USAC Silver Crown and National Sprint Car victories. Along the way, he tallied enough of them at LOR to place him within the top-five on the track’s all-time USAC win list.
Yet, after 2012, the win column at the .686-mile paved oval was void of Santos as the Swanson brothers (Tanner and Kody) began their era of domination, notching wins in seven of the eight Silver Crown races held at the place since Santos’ last triumph in 2012.
Thursday night, the Santos era was reborn at LOR as he outdueled Tanner Swanson early in the going, then held the point for the remainder of the 100-lapper despite having to withstand constant heavy pressure from Swanson for the majority of the event to earn his eighth overall victory at LOR, tying him with the event’s namesake Rich Vogler on the track’s all-time win list after capturing the “Rich Vogler/USAC Hall of Fame Classic.”
Ever since he was a child, Lucas Oil Raceway (formerly known as Indianapolis Raceway Park) was a special place for Santos, even long before he ever first set foot on the property.
“I grew up always hearing about it as a kid in Massachusetts,” Santos recalls. “Then, I got the opportunity to come here and race against guys like Dave Steele, J.J. Yeley and Tracy Hines. From the first time I came here 13 years ago, I’ve always loved this place. It just took to my driving style right away. I won some races here, but since then I’ve been off. For a couple of those years, I fell out of love with it, but now I’m back in love with it.”
The perception of USAC Silver Crown (presented by TRAXXAS) racing is that the 100-lap races are marathons and not sprints. Drivers will settle into a groove until about halfway before making their move. The opening laps of Thursday’s race were anything but as pole sitter Tanner Swanson and third-starting Bobby Santos waged war in a wheel-to-wheel, side-by-side fistfight for the first three circuits, each taking their turn at the front: Santos (lap 1), Swanson (lap 2) and Santos once again on the third lap where he would finally secure the spot.
“They’re long races and it’s important to pace yourself, but at the same time, sometimes you have to make things happen early,” Santos explains. “I got by Tanner, then pinned him down on the bottom and made him work harder than I was working those first five laps. As crazy as it sounds, I think that pinning him down on those first five laps made a difference in my car versus his at the end.”
Tanner acknowledges the importance of track position, especially at a place like LOR where it may take multiple laps to set up and complete a pass.
“It’s tough here because it’s so narrow on entry,” Tanner details. “You’ve got spotters, so you know if a guy’s going to try do something to you. They can kind of protect their line if they need to, which we all do. When you’re racing guys as good as Bobby Santos, my brother Kody and Aaron Pierce, they know where to put their car so it’s hard to get around them. If you’ve got two cars going the same speed, that makes it tough on you.”
By the 15th lap, Santos led a four-car breakaway with Tanner Swanson, Kody Swanson and Aaron Pierce in hot pursuit as the frontrunners finally settled in. At that point, and through much of the first half, Santos admits that when he distanced himself from Tanner for a bit, he thought he had it “nice and smooth.” However, following a lap 42 restart, the sprint began.
Third-running Kody Swanson lost two spots on the front-straightaway as the green flag waved, dropping him to fifth as Pierce and Jerry Coons, Jr. scooted by for third and fourth, respectively. Meanwhile, Tanner hung right with Santos and was ready to pounce if the opportunity arose.

“They’re long races and it’s important to pace yourself, but at the same time, sometimes you have to make things happen early,” Santos explains. “I got by Tanner, then pinned him down on the bottom and made him work harder than I was working those first five laps. As crazy as it sounds, I think that pinning him down on those first five laps made a difference in my car versus his at the end.” – Bobby Santos –
(John Mahoney Photo)
On lap 58, Tanner took a chance on Santos as they came up to lap Tyler Courtney who was making his pavement Silver Crown debut. Santos, the master craftsman that he is, executed the first of several lapped cars without a flinch, denying Tanner a golden opportunity. Though lapped cars can be disruptive to the leaders at times, often they can prove to be just as beneficial. Either way, they have, and always will be, a part of the deal.
“Lapped cars are tough,” Santos plainly states. “Everyone did a good job holding their line. Some of them were on the top and some of them were on the bottom, so we had to go inside and out. I think a handful of us are pretty fast here and you’re going to deal with lapped cars. It’s part of the race and, sometimes, being the guy out front is actually a disadvantage with lapped cars. I just had to work hard to not allow that to hurt us.”
Santos and Tanner remained tied together in this high-speed dance, separated by no more than, at most, two car lengths at any point. Each time, it appeared Santos had won another battleground by overtaking another lapped car. Yet, each time, there was Tanner, mimicking Santos’ every move and losing absolutely no ground.
Lap after lap, Tanner was Tom and Santos was Jerry in this game of cat-and-mouse when they were finally able to clear the bulk of lapped traffic with 25 to go, leaving no traffic ahead of them for half a track. The breathing room would quickly subside as the two re-entered rush hour with 15 remaining, but if Tanner was waiting for a mistake by Santos down the stretch, he wasn’t seeing it as Santos was picture perfect after both dove under Coons with 11 to go.
Tanner was waiting, watching and thinking where he could make his move. An opportunity appeared to be on the horizon as a four-car group battled two and three-wide a half-straightaway ahead. Tanner knew this was the spot he’d been anxiously waiting for.
“I ended up getting Kody in lapped traffic here in the July race a couple years ago,” Tanner remembers. “That’s your best chance to make a move. I tried to get up on the horse and run him down before we got to them. It’s tough to tell where lapped cars are going which makes it tough to make a play on a guy.”
Approaching the gaggle with cautious optimism, that opportunity nearly blew up in front of both Santos and Tanner with eight laps to go as Annie Breidinger, having a solid top-ten run in her series debut, got sideways and tagged the turn three SAFER barrier before continuing on in front of the leaders. That brought out the yellow, thus sending the lapped cars to the tail and presenting a clear track ahead for Santos and Tanner on the green-white-checkered restart.
Though disappointed by the yellow, a chance still existed. After all, during a green-white-checkered run to end May’s event, it was Santos who beat Tanner for second.
“I was going to try and make it exciting,” Tanner admits. “But we just didn’t get that good of a restart. The motor stumbled a little bit and that was all she wrote. You just can’t give a guy like Bobby Santos two car-lengths with two laps to go. He knows how to finish off these races.”
That, he did. Santos picked up the throttle and, as he did, for 400 consecutive turns, did not turn a wheel wrong and finished off a Hall of Fame-worthy performance on a night honoring the 12 newest inductees to the USAC Hall of Fame, defeating Tanner Swanson, Aaron Pierce, Kody Swanson and Chris Windom to the line for his eighth career Silver Crown victory, moving him into sole possession of 13th on the all-time Silver Crown win list.
It’s been a storybook beginning to Santos’s season in his DJ Racing/Simpson Race Products/Beast/VDS Chevy, following a win at Phoenix in April, a second at LOR in May and now another victory at LOR heading into next Friday’s Hemelgarn Super Fitness Rollie Beale Classic at Ohio’s Toledo Speedway.
Speaking of fitness, that is something that Santos took to heart in the offseason as he aimed to get back on top of his game.
“I never thought it was important when I was young,” the 31-year-old Santos admits. “But the last couple years, it’s come into play for me. This year is the best I’ve felt in a long time. As you get older, you’ve got to do it. I just learned that the hard way the last couple years.”
Just as important, though, is the dedication he and the DJ Racing crew had on getting their racecar better. It’s a racecar that Santos admits was a solid car the last couple years, but not a winning racecar until this year.
“We were disappointed with the way we’ve ran the last couple years,” Santos said point blank. “We were good, but we were a third to fifth-place car. Winning races is what it’s all about. It keeps making you work harder when you win. But when you’re on a losing streak, it gets depressing and it’s hard to get out of. This winter, we really went to work on getting our engine better, our car better and myself better. To this point, it’s paying off.”
Of course, continuously working on the car to get it more competitive is the ultimate goal of all who race, but when you have to deal with the likes of Kody and Tanner Swanson each time you compete, you are going to have your work cut out for you. It’s something Santos realizes is not an easy task.
“We had to work our butt off for the last 70-plus laps,” Santos stated. “Kody and Tanner are awesome. It’s an honor to be able to beat those guys. They’re two of the best and to beat them it means a lot. The last race here in May, we learned something and we finally got on the same page as those two guys. It feels great to retake the throne after this one, but I’m sure they’ll be back strong the next time.”
Kingsburg, California’s Tanner Swanson’s plans for this year called for competing in only three Silver Crown events and, the majority of the time, he makes the most of each opportunity as evidenced by a third and second in his two LOR runs this season. Tanner feels he didn’t leave much on the table in his final event of 2017, but thinks he could’ve been more aggressive at certain times, in hindsight, in his Bowman Racing/Brickers Pub – Bowman Properties/Beast/Kistler Chevy.
“Santos had the car to beat all night,” Tanner credits. “There at the beginning, I kind of played with him and didn’t want to wear myself out. I probably should’ve been a little more aggressive and tried to get the lead there and set my own pace. He was moving at the start and when we got to about lap 50 or 60, I realized I was going to have to pressure him if I was going to do anything. We ran him down, but couldn’t do much once we got there. I think last year we would’ve been able to lap the field like that. Everybody else has gotten their stuff figured out. We’re just going to have to step up our game a little bit more.”
Back in May’s “Carb Night Classic,” Muncie, Indiana’s Aaron Pierce was a lapped car. This time around, he was a contender from the moment he first hit the track, finishing third in his Sam Pierce/Sam Pierce Chevrolet – G & G Racing Fuel/Beast/Chevy.
“We’ve been coming here for the last few years,” Pierce begins. “We’ve qualified fifth and we’ve run fifth. We had fast time a couple years ago and had a good car that night, but we just couldn’t get our car to race well. I think we learned a little bit tonight. In May, they lapped us, so at least we’re on the same straightaway with them now. Maybe if we can pick it up, learn a little more from them and use what we learned, we can be up here again next time. I kick myself a lot of times for not running hard enough at the beginning. I told myself tonight that I wasn’t going to take it easy at the beginning. I was going to try to run as fast as I could run the whole race.”
Contingency award winners Thursday night at Lucas Oil Raceway include Tanner Swanson (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Annie Breidinger (KSE Hard Charger) and Joss Moffatt (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) RACE RESULTS: July 20, 2017 – Brownsburg, Indiana – Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis – “Rich Vogler USAC Hall of Fame Classic”
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Tanner Swanson, 02, Bowman-21.038; 2. Kody Swanson, 63, DePalma-21.045; 3. Bobby Santos, 22, DJ Racing-21.085; 4. Aaron Pierce, 26, Pierce-21.319; 5. Justin Grant, 91, Hemelgarn/Carli-21.386; 6. Ryan Newman, 2v, Vance-21.498; 7. Jerry Coons, Jr., 20, Nolen-21.555; 8. David Byrne, 40, Byrne-21.616; 9. Damion Gardner, 6, Klatt-21.618; 10. Chris Windom, 92, Kazmark-21.764; 11. Joe Axsom, 120, Nolen-21.915; 12. Davey Hamilton Jr., 98, RPM/Gormly-22.127; 13. Kevin Studley, 57, Studley-22.209; 14. Patrick Lawson, 2, Lawson-22.728; 15. Bill Rose, 75, Rose-22.751; 16. Joe Liguori, 4, Liguori-22.891; 17. Tyler Courtney, 99, RPM/Gormly-23.145; 18. Joss Moffatt, 32, Williams/Wright-23.236; 19. Matt Goodnight, 39, Goodnight-23.420; 20. Annie Briedinger, 80, Briedinger-24.053; 21. Shane Cottle, 81, Williams-NT.
FEATURE: (100 laps) 1. Bobby Santos, 2. Tanner Swanson, 3. Aaron Pierce, 4. Kody Swanson, 5. Chris Windom, 6. Justin Grant, 7. Jerry Coons, Jr., 8. David Byrne, 9. Davey Hamilton, Jr., 10. Annie Briedinger, 11. Kevin Studley, 12. Tyler Courtney, 13. Joss Moffatt, 14. Matt Goodnight, 15. Patrick Lawson, 16. Joe Liguori, 17. Joe Axsom, 18. Ryan Newman, 19. Bill Rose, 20. Damion Gardner, 21. Shane Cottle. NT
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FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Lap 1 Santos, Lap 2 T.Swanson, Laps 3-100 Santos.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER AWARD: Annie Briedinger (18th to 10th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Joss Moffatt
NEW USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR SERIES (presented by TRAXXAS) POINTS: 1-K.Swanson-341, 2-Windom-290, 3-Coons-278, 4-Byrne-237, 5-Santos-213, 6-Pierce-197, 7-Grant-192, 8-Gardner-184, 9-T.Swanson-167, 10-Liguori-154.
NEXT USAC SILVER CROWN CHAMP CAR RACE (presented by TRAXXAS): July 28– Toledo (Ohio) Speedway – Hemelgarn Racing Super Fitness “Rollie Beale Classic”

THOMAS LEAVES NO DOUBT IN BLOOMINGTON “SHELDON KINSER MEMORIAL” SCORE

2017 “Sheldon Kinser Memorial” winner Kevin Thomas, Jr.
(David Nearpass Photo)
THOMAS LEAVES NO DOUBT IN BLOOMINGTON
“SHELDON KINSER MEMORIAL” SCORE

By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Bloomington, Indiana………Indiana Sprint Week at Bloomington Speedway is pretty much where it began for Kevin Thomas, Jr. five years ago.
Fourteen USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car wins and five Indiana Sprint Week victories later, the Cullman, Alabama native finally made a return visit to Bloomington victory lane, leading the final 28 laps of Friday night’s 29th Annual “Sheldon Kinser Memorial” to score his second series victory of the year and vaulting him into the ISW presented by Camping World point lead with two events remaining.
With a full decade under his belt as a mainstay on the USAC Sprint Car scene as well as Bloomington Speedway, the 25-year-old, who made his first Bloomington USAC appearance as a teenager back in 2007, has a fair share of experience on the red, Southern Indiana clay.
“I’ve run a lot of laps here,” Thomas admits. “It’s pretty special to come back here and do this again. We run here as much as we can, local shows and with other organizations and, over 10 years here now, it’s been a pretty good bit. It’s just the number of laps. I’m just really comfortable here.”
Tonight was nice and slick to a big ol’ curb,” Thomas continued. “We made good decisions. We’ve been trying some things at local shows to help us out whenever it gets like that here. My crew made all the right calls in the pits and gave me a great racecar. It was pretty nice to drive tonight, especially up there against that treacherous curb. It’s hard to keep your concentration for that many laps in a row, but having a car like I had makes it easier. Once you’re out front, you have to keep your nose clean and run a smart race, pick off lapped cars whenever you can and try not to make any mistakes, which is hard to do up there. Everything with our package we have right now runs well. It’s just a joy to drive.”
Thomas would begin the 30-lap event from outside of the second row, and took quick action to get to the front. Coming off the second turn on the opening lap, pole sitter Chad Boespflug spurted away to the lead while Robert Ballou (bottom), Thomas (middle) and Thomas Meseraull (top) battled three-wide for second. Bloomington’s tight confines made it a tough proposition for all three to successfully make it to turn three unscathed, and that would prove to be the case.
Midway down the back straight, Thomas and Meseraull made contact. Meseraull’s left front wheel served as a launching pad for Thomas who hopped his right rear tire over Meseraull’s wheel, collapsing Meseraull’s front end and concluding a night that proved crushing to the San Jose, California’s Indiana Sprint Week title hopes, dropping him from second in the standings (13 back) to fifth and 28 out of the lead with just two events remaining.
It was an incident in which Kevin Thomas, Jr. put the full blame squarely on his own shoulders.
“I got a decent start,” Thomas recalls. “I rolled the middle and got up beside Thomas. Honestly, it’s just a lack of concentration on my part. I caught myself looking at the bottom at Boespflug and I let my right rear slide out a little bit too far and I ran Thomas out of room. That was 100% my fault. He didn’t do anything wrong and it’s just unfortunate what happened to him. They’ve been good all week. It’s not the way we want to race because he doesn’t race like that and I try not to race like that. It’s just an unfortunate circumstance for him. He’s been good all week and he was good tonight. I just lost concentration on my end.”
With the incident occurring on the opening lap, there were still 30 laps to try to retain that focus that is so sorely needed to compete at a winning level. With that situation weighing on his mind, Thomas had to regain his composure and get back to the task at hand.
“When you make contact, then yellow comes out immediately and you see his front end knocked out like that, it’s a disheartening because he and I have raced for a long, long time. We don’t usually make contact. He’s got a wife and kids. He’s here to make a living too. To take his night away from him like that is not cool on my part.”
When action resumed, many believed the race would be won on the bottom including leader Boespflug, but Kevin Thomas, Jr. had his car set up to run the top and he didn’t intend to stray from that notion. Thomas was able to inch a bit closer on the first three circuits as the two ran side-by-side, Boespflug around the infield tires and Thomas riding the ledge.
Boespflug clung to the lead by a car length at the line at the conclusion of lap three, but Thomas made some headway on the following lap and, coming off four, surged ahead of Boespflug as he hung his right-side tires off the front straightaway curb at the start/finish line to secure the point. Boespflug took one more run at Thomas on lap four, attempting a half-slider in turn three to no avail, allowing Thomas to step through the door and slam it shut as he left the rest of the field behind.
By the tenth lap, Thomas had built up a full-straightaway lead with Troy, Ohio’s Lee Underwood holding down the second spot in one of the most remarkable drives all week, one lap after he blew by Boespflug on the bottom for the runner-up position. By halfway, lappers were everywhere, suffocating the high and low-lines on each end of the quarter-mile, but Thomas had no intentions of leaving his comfort zone up top.
“I just don’t run the bottom,” Thomas said without hesitation. “It’s just one of those things. If I could run in the top-five on the top and not have to run the bottom, it’s probably what I’m going to try to do. I just don’t have enough patience to run the bottom. I’m not very good at it. We set up to run the top as much as we can. It’s just a comfort level up there for me. I thought about going to the bottom a few times in lapped traffic. I think I tried it one time and I completely missed the bottom. I knew I couldn’t do this any longer, so I just stuck it out, tried to get a little bit closer to the lappers, then I just slid them.”
Just after halfway, Boespflug found his second wind, discovering his groove on the high-side to sweep past Underwood for second on lap 18 with eyes affixed on catching Thomas in the gridlock of lapped traffic that lie ahead. Still trailing by nearly three seconds, Boespflug would need a caution or something drastic to occur in front of Thomas in the closing laps, and it nearly did.
With six to go, the cars of Max McGhee and C.J. Leary became hooked together rear bumper to front bumper, respectively, right in front of Thomas, which briefly caused a bit of consternation for the race leader. The two eventually were able untangle at the exit of turn four before continuing, but luckily for Thomas, he was able to take evasive action to avoid catastrophe.

Bloomington winner Kevin Thomas, Jr. (2nd from left) stands in victory lane along with Sheldon Kinser’s family following his victory Friday night.
(Ryan Sellers Photo)
“I did see that,” Thomas recalls. “It’s just one of those deals. You have to look far enough ahead, but you still have to concentrate as much as you can on the cushion you’re running. It can bite you just as much as those two beating and banging on each other. Something can happen and you might get into them. It’s a little bit of both. You have to concentrate really hard on what the cars are doing in front of you. You have to get your momentum up before you get there, then whenever they make a mistake, just squirt by and get yourself out of the problem. That’s really all you can do in that situation.”
With no caution coming out for the incident, it became a split-second decision that could’ve ultimately decided the race. As Boespflug charged at Thomas with a full-head of steam, it was the line Thomas had already established that he believes helped him navigate through the potential hazards as they occurred.
“If you try to wait and go to the bottom, say somebody knocks their front end out, then turns down the track and you get taken out of the lead, that’s just one thing you don’t want to happen. I feel like the top is the easiest way out of trouble. There’s normally so much banking on these tracks that when something happens, it usually ends up going to the bottom. I think you have a little bit more space if something does happen, so I just stick to the top. If something happens, you can drive off the top of the track, especially here since there’s no walls. If you can get slowed down and turn underneath it, you’ve got to stick to the top. You can’t open yourself up too much for the guy behind you. It’s just a fine line right there, but it’s a gamble you have to take.”
No such trouble stood in Thomas’ path on the final five revolutions around the oval, though he did have to contend with a three-way battle for 16th between Justin Grant, Carson Short and Shane Cottle that formed a Red Rover Wall of sorts with two to go that prevented him from breaking free. The pack would thin out and Thomas would win out, finishing off a dominating performance in his KT Motorsports/Abreu Vineyards – KT Construction Services/DRC/Speedway Chevy over Boespflug, a series-best performance for the unrelated Tyler Thomas, followed by the surprise of ISW – Lee Underwood – who came home a career-best fourth while Robert Ballou rounded out the top-five.
With the victory, Thomas now holds down a five-point advantage in the ISW standings. With two shows remaining, Thomas plans to block out any thoughts on so-called “points racing.”
“In the first part of the week, I was actually paying attention to the points,” Thomas recalls. “I’d been running (terrible). Tonight, it was another gameplan, a different mindset. We’re just here to win now. If you win the race, the points will take care of themselves. As far as that old points racing crap, I’m kind of over it. That’s not what I do. Whenever I do, I don’t make good decisions and I’m not aggressive. It’s just not the way I like to run races. We’re just going to go out there to win every race. If we do, we do. If we don’t, we don’t. If something happens and we get taken out like Meseraull did tonight, that is what it is. It’s just the way this week can go. It’s a tough week. You want to be in position to capitalize on the opportunities you do have and hope that nothing bad happens to you.”
After a tumultuous past month that hadn’t seen a top-five finish in the last 30 days, Hanford, California’s Chad Boespflug has seemingly gotten back on a track, following up a fourth-place run Monday night at Gas City with a runner-up finish Friday night at Bloomington in his Dynamics, Inc./Mean Green – PAC Springs/Maxim/Claxton. It’s been a turnaround a long-time coming after their confidence was shaken following a string of results that had not lived up to their expectations.
“When things don’t go the way you want them to go and the late nights at the shop and the early mornings come and go, things can seem like they’re falling apart,” Boespflug explains. “(Crewmen) Davey (Jones), Richard (Hoffman) and myself have had to pep talk each other at times to try and get things going. We all believe in each other and that’s the key. I think saying what we did to each other lit a fire under our butts and got us going again.”
Like many, Boespflug stayed on the bottom early before gravitating to the top where he seemed to pick up speed about halfway through and worked his way back to second.
“I just hung out on the bottom too long,” Boespflug laments. “Early on, I thought that was going to be the place. The top cleaned off pretty good for Kevin, so I jumped up there and ran one lap in one corner at the top, then went to the bottom and vice-versa. I kind of jumped around a bunch, but that didn’t seem to work, so I just stuck to the top. I was kind of tip-toeing, getting my speed up. Lee (Underwood) got underneath me and I really had to hustle to get back around him. I was getting closer to KT about halfway through, then the rubber came and we were all running the same speed around the top.”
Collinsville, Oklahoma’s Tyler Thomas’ last few weeks revolved around rebuilding a car that had been heavily-damaged in the non-sanctioned “No Way Out 40” at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway a few weeks back. That comes in addition to minor setbacks and missing a few shows that proved a setback to the 21-year-old who first stepped into a USAC Sprint Car at this point one year ago. On Friday night, all the pieces came together for T. Thomas and his Jerry Burton-owned/Jerry Burton Masonry – Johnson’s Taxidermy/DRC/Foxco to record a best-career USAC National Sprint Car finish of third.
“It’s really special to me, especially to do it in the Jerry Burton car,” Thomas beamed. “We’ve been battling so many small problems that’s kept us from qualifying well and getting through our heat race. Plus, we missed a couple nights and, prior to all of this, we had to rebuild the car a couple weeks ago after a crash. We got it together tonight. We qualified really well and got through the heat race and ran up front in the feature tonight. I just tried to be real patient there. I rolled around the bottom – felt like for maybe too long – but once we got up to the top and got around Ballou and Underwood, this car was on a roll.
“We’ve been battling a lot of different issues all year,” Thomas explains. “There’s nothing we could’ve done. It’s just been bad luck, really. We were finally able to get everything dialed in tonight. This is by far the best night we’ve had all year. I never would’ve dreamed we would’ve run top-three at Sprint Week this week, but it feels pretty damn cool.”
Brownsburg, Indiana driver A.J. Hopkins was released from the hospital early Saturdaymorning after a frightening semi-feature incident in which he ramped over the right rear wheel of another car, sending him flipping through a fence located between turns one and two where he eventually came to a rest in a parking area, making contact with a couple of pickup trucks along the way.
Contingency award winners Friday at Bloomington Speedway include Carson Short (ProSource Fast Qualifier), C.J. Leary (Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Robert Ballou (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner), Brody Roa (Chalk Stix 3rd Heat Winner), Chad Boespflug (Indy Race Parts 4th Heat Winner), Brady Short (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Josh Hodges (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: July 14, 2017 – Bloomington, Indiana – Bloomington Speedway – 29th “Sheldon Kinser Memorial” – “Indiana Sprint Week” Presented by Camping World
PROSOURCE/B & W AUTO MART QUALIFYING: 1. Carson Short, 21, RCM-10.842; 2. Ryan Bernal, 17G, On The Gass-11.032; 3. Max McGhee, 17, McGhee-11.037; 4. Tyler Thomas, 04, Burton-11.069; 5. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 9K, KT-11.078; 6. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-11,095; 7. Thomas Meseraull, 5B, Briscoe-11.127; 8. Chad Boespflug, 69, Dynamics-11.151; 9. Lee Underwood, 24L, Underwood-11.155; 10. Josh Hodges, 74x, Hodges-11.162; 11. Hunter Schuerenberg, 44, Pace-11.170; 12. Chase Stockon, 32, 32 TBI-11.181; 13. Jeff Bland, Jr., 66w, Waltz-11.194; 14. Chris Windom, 5, Baldwin-11.210; 15. Tyler Courtney, 23c, TOPP-11.262; 16. Dave Darland, 71p, Phillips/Curb-Agajanian-11.290; 17. Jarett Andretti, 18, Andretti-11.318; 18. Garrett Aitken, 32A, Aitken-11.326; 19. Dakota Jackson, 3, Jackson-11.326; 20. Kyle Cummins, 3R, Rock Steady-11.357; 21. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-11.367; 22. Kody Swanson, 2E, Epperson-11.372; 23. Brody Roa, 91T, BR-11.386; 24. Shane Cottle, 57, Hazen-11.482; 25. Justin Grant, 11, McGhee-11.483; 26. Matt McDonald, 5m, McDonald-11.500; 27. A.J. Hopkins, 4J, 4J Motorsports-11.530; 28. Jon Stanbrough, 77, Wingo-11.551; 29. Brady Short, 11p, Pottorff-11.553; 30. Brandon Mattox, 28, Mattox-11.597; 31. Brent Beauchamp, 34, Olson-11.612; 32. Jerry Coons, Jr., 21K, Krockenberger-11.652; 33. Aaron Farney, 15F, DCT-11.711; 34. Shelby VanGilder, 22v, VanGilder-11.813; 35. Katlynn Leer, 77K, Leer-11.820; 36. Jamie Williams, 31, Williams-11.842; 37. Koby Barksdale, 22, Barksdale-11.916; 38. Alec Sipes, 99, Sipes-12.415; 39. Brady Ottinger, 4B, 4J Motorsports-12.630; 40. Tyler Clem, 14c, Clem/TSR-(Time of 11.864 disallowed).
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Leary, 2. K. Thomas, 3. Bland, 4. B. Short, 5. C. Short, 6. Grant, 7. Andretti, 8. Farney, 9. Barksdale, 10. Underwood. NT
COMPETITION SUSPENSION (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Ballou, 2. Swanson, 3. Bernal, 4. Hodges, 5. McDonald, 6. Sipes, 7. VanGilder, 8. Aitken, 9. Mattox, 10. Windom. NT
CHALK STIX THIRD HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Roa, 2. Jackson, 3. Courtney, 4. Meseraull, 5. Beauchamp, 6. Hopkins, 7. McGhee, 8. Leer, 9. Ottinger, 10. Schuerenberg. NT
INDY RACE PARTS FOURTH HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Boespflug, 2. Darland, 3. Cottle, 4. T. Thomas, 5. Stanbrough, 6. Coons, 7. Williams, 8. Clem, 9. Cummins, 10. Stockon. NT
C-MAIN: (10 laps) 1. Coons, 2. Beauchamp, 3. Farney, 4. Williams, 5. Barksdale, 6. Clem, 7. VanGilder, 8. Ottinger, 9. Sipes, 10. Leer. NT
SEMI: (12 laps) 1. McGhee, 2. Schuerenberg, 3. Grant, 4. Underwood, 5. Stockon, 6. Windom, 7. C. Short, 8. Coons, 9. Aitken, 10. Stanbrough, 11. Beauchamp, 12. Mattox, 13. Andretti, 14. Williams, 15. Barksdale, 16. Cummins, 17. Farney, 18. Hopkins. NT
FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. Kevin Thomas, Jr. 2. Chad Boespflug, 3. Tyler Thomas, 4. Lee Underwood, 5. Robert Ballou, 6. Jeff Bland, Jr., 7. Chris Windom, 8. Tyler Courtney, 9. Chase Stockon, 10. Brady Short, 11. Dave Darland, 12. Hunter Schuerenberg, 13. Josh Hodges, 14. Ryan Bernal, 15. Kody Swanson, 16. Justin Grant, 17. Carson Short, 18. Shane Cottle, 19. Dakota Jackson, 20. C.J. Leary, 21. Jarett Andretti, 22. Brody Roa, 23. Max McGhee, 24. Thomas Meseraull. NT
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**Hopkins flipped through the fence outside turn two during the semi. He was transported to a local hospital for observation.
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-2 Boespflug, Laps 3-30 K. Thomas.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Brady Short (22nd-10th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Josh Hodges
NEW USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP POINTS: 1-Windom-1,236, 2-Grant-1,229, 3-Boespflug-1,102, 4-Stockon-1,071, 5-K. Thomas-1,053, 6-Courtney-1,025, 7-Leary-944, 8-Brady Bacon-913, 9-Darland-859, 10-Meseraull-816.
NEW INDIANA SPRINT WEEK Presented by Camping World POINTS: 1-K. Thomas-270, 2-Ballou-265, 3-Leary-258, 4-Windom-243, 5-Meseraull-242, 6-Darland-236, 7-Courtney-219, 8-Brady Bacon-203, 9-Boespflug-200, 10-Hodges-187.
NEXT USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: July 15 – Haubstadt, IN – Tri-State Speedway – “Indiana Sprint Week” – Presented by Camping World

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LEARY REIGNS FOR 2ND STRAIGHT NIGHT AT GAS CITY

C.J. Leary won in Indiana Sprint Week for the second straight night
Monday night at Gas City I-69 Speedway.
(Steve Koletar Photo)
LEARY REIGNS FOR 2ND STRAIGHT NIGHT AT GAS CITY

By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Gas City, Indiana………’Once you win one, the floodgates will open and you’ll begin to win a bunch of them.”
That’s the sentiment C.J. Leary had heard time and time again over the past few seasons, much to his chagrin, as he came within a whisker of breaking through on several occasions.
“I’ve heard it my whole career,” Leary admits. ‘Once you get the monkey off your back, the wins will come easier.’ I didn’t believe them. It took me 140 starts to get my first USAC National Sprint Car victory and it took me 28 to get the second one.”
But, it only took one more start to go from win number two to USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car victory number three on the third Monday night event in Indiana Sprint Week history, blitzing around the outside of Robert Ballou with five laps remaining to win round three of Indiana Sprint Week presented by Camping World at Gas City I-69 Speedway.
Leary, Sunday’s Lawrenceburg winner, became the first driver to win consecutive Indiana Sprint Week features since Bryan Clauson in 2013. Leary’s seen fire and he’s seen rain, but one or the other would have to win over the other on this night.
Lately, the fire has been Leary who has been en fuego since the beginning of ISW while the rain has been, well, it’s usual self lately. Monday night’s makeup was originally intended as the opener prior to being washed away by the elements last Friday. Yet, on this night, each driver was competing in a pair of races: the 30-lap main event and a race versus Mother Nature that saw the program proceed at a rapid pace with a checkered flag that dropped before nightfall, 8:50pm local time to be precise.
Leary began the race from the outside of the front row, yet, early on, an encore performance from the night before did not appear to be in the cards as he dropped from the front row to fifth on the opening lap. But the 21-year-old second generation driver dug into the high side and went to work as Shane Cottle zipped away on the bottom to lead the opening pair of laps.
On the third circuit, Kokomo winner Thomas Meseraull ripped the top around the outside of Cottle to claim the lead exiting turn four. Robert Ballou followed suit, making the same maneuver to get to the runner-up spot off the second turn. Like he did two nights earlier, Meseraull hurried to the front and appeared to be in total control as he built a more than one-second lead ten laps in.
By halfway, the frontrunners had entered traffic where Meseraull leaned on the cush and Ballou tip-toed around the infield tires. The track’s equilibrium was in perfect balance with the top and bottom proving perfectly equal as Meseraull’s and Ballou’s machines rode in unison as if they were bolted down to a carnival carousel on laps 19, 20 and 21. Neither had budged an inch in either direction as the two shadowed one another with Meseraull leading each time at the stripe by a slim margin.
The action would come to a halt with 10 laps remaining as Ryan Bernal’s mount nosed into the outside turn four guardrail with 10 laps remaining, necessitating a yellow and a lap 21 restart with Meseraull at the head of the class and a surging Robert Ballou right on his rear bumper.
However, under caution, third-running Leary made a key adjustment that would ultimately pay large dividends.
“This thing was digging hard on the top,” Leary explains. We were just kind of riding along. I didn’t think we were going to have anything for them at the end really, but when the yellow came out, we adjusted on the shocks after starting off kind of tight. The car finally came to us. We adjusted from there and became a lot better.”
Still mired in third, Leary would still have to find a way around superstar veterans Meseraull and Ballou on the restart, a tall task to ask from anybody. Leary’s first domino fell when Meseraull drifted high at the exit of turn two, falling off the shelf and over the cushion, dropping him out of the lead as Ballou slipped by on the bottom for the lead and Leary was there to strike as well, taking advantage of the fortuitous occurrence to grab second.
Ballou firmly planted his talons on the bottom while Leary took ownership of the top lane, the only place he felt he needed to be down the stretch.
“It was treacherous around the top,” Leary detailed. “I had to hit my marks, but I really had to run it hard to keep the rest of the field behind us. I think I might’ve stumbled a little bit on the top a time or two, but it was so easy to make a mistake and not get the run down the straightaway that we needed. On the bottom, you could tiptoe around the tires and you could get a pretty good spurt off. But, the longer the race went on, the slicker the bottom got. The top pretty much stayed the same.”
Leary took the long way around, but little-by-little, it began to pay off as he shrunk Ballou’s lead down to a sliver and eventually grabbed the top spot with five to go. Meanwhile, Chris Windom had entered the fray and was able to limbo past Ballou between turns one and two with just four to go. It was a rubber match as the two made contact on exit with Windom’s right rear and Ballou’s left front meeting face-to-face. Ballou’s front wheels took a hop as he lost momentum and fell to a distant third momentarily. Windom then used a big drive on the bottom to surge underneath Leary off of four to take the lead at the line.
However, before the completion of the lap, Hunter Schuerenberg and Tyler Thomas made contact back in the pack, sending Thomas into a 360 spin. Though he managed to keep it rolling, by rule, the spin required a yellow, which meant the lineup would revert to the most-recently scored lap, relegating Windom all the way back to third for the restart behind Leary and Ballou.
Ballou wasn’t keen on letting Leary slip away down the final stretch, keeping tabs on the black 30 and getting a drive off the bottom to come within inches of leading the 27th lap despite clipping one of the infield tires exiting four that briefly lifted his front wheels.
Ballou kept at it, though, and was able to take a two car-length advantage over Leary into turn three on lap 28. However, once again, the infield tires proved a nemesis for “The Madman” as Ballou clipped the same tire with the left front, forcing him sideways and his wheels pointing toward the sky. When he came back to the earth on all fours, he clipped a second tire at the exit of four, slowing him down just enough to allow the unfettered Leary to break free by five car-lengths, an advantage he would not surrender in the final two laps to win for the second night in a row aboard the family-owned Leary Racing/Leary Construction – Highsmith Guns/DRC/1-Way Chevy over Ballou, Windom, Chad Boespflug and Brady Bacon.
When It rains, it pours, figuratively speaking, of course. As the race against the rain was defeated, Leary’s confidence is at an all-time high right now after changes in personnel as well as bits and pieces on the car prior to Indiana Sprint Week where he now holds a 13-point lead in the series with four races remaining, picking back up at the Terre Haute Action Track Wednesday following a day off Tuesday.
“(The changes) are really paying off,” Leary said. “My confidence is up and I think it kind of showed tonight. We got her qualified up-front at a track that’s not really one of my better tracks. Last night, people could’ve said it was my best racetrack and blah, blah, blah, but not tonight. To go back-to-back in Indiana Sprint Week is unreal. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet. I really wish we were racing tomorrow. We got the roll going and I don’t want to stop now.”
“We’re going to take it night-by-night and we’re not going to start counting the points until the end,” Leary added. “We can pat ourselves on the back for a little bit Tuesdayon our day off, then get prepared for the final four nights and we’ll see where we end up.”
Rocklin, California’s Robert Ballou led five laps on his way to a runner-up result in his Robert Ballou Motorsports/Deaton’s Waterfront Services – Lucas Oil/Don Ott-powered Twister-X chassis, a car that Ballou estimates is around 15 years old, but still gets the job done.
“Unfortunately, if you can’t find your comfort level, you’ve got to try something else,” Ballou explains. “I put these Twister-X cars together from Jimmy Crawford who sent them out here from California. We’re just trying to get things back in line with some old cars. I’ve ran this car before. They’re good cars and I’m comfortable in them. We pulled a car out the first night at Kokomo on Saturday and you just can’t pull a car out and expect to pick back up where you left off. It’s been years since we’ve run it. But I knew if we could put it together in time, it would be good and it’s been pretty good so far.”
On a wild lap scramble for position at the front with four laps to go, Ballou dropped from first to third in one sequence. But a yellow flag fell in his favor moments later, serving as his saving grace and placed him back in position with an opportunity to win on the final restart.
“I got lucky. I got lucky,” Ballou reiterated. “A lot of times things fall in your favor and a lot of times they don’t fall in your favor. Tonight was one that fell in my favor. When the track is slick and you have to drive it off the right front, rotate around the tires and get off the corner, that’s not Robert Ballou. We were a tick off all night. I couldn’t get the thing stuck on the right rear the way I wanted to and to where I feel comfortable. I couldn’t hit my marks as good as I wanted. It got so narrow and tedious that I’d lose the right rear, then I’d have to wait on it. I was holding everybody up, let’s be honest. But it’s racing and C.J. found a way around me.”
“Hats off to the O’Connors,” Ballou praised the family operating the track. “Everything was against them weather-wise, so I have to commend them for taking on the task and doing what they did. But we missed the setup a little bit. We’re inching closer and closer every night. I still feel a little rusty and I feel I haven’t quite caught my stride yet. We’re getting closer and we’re getting the racecar more comfortable. If I’m not comfortable, it’s kind of like what Donny Schatz says along the lines of ‘if the driver isn’t comfortable, it’s over with.’ I just haven’t found that perfect comfort level yet that makes me fast every night. We’re almost there at certain tracks and I believe the rest of this week should show that.”
Chris Windom had an ignition box fall by the wayside prior to his heat race, forcing him to go through the semi to earn a spot in the feature lineup. Windom recovered with a solid third-place run, though it came with a bit of heartache after being caught out by a yellow after taking the lead with four laps remaining. There are no days off for Windom to lick his wounds as he has a test scheduled Tuesday to prepare for his NASCAR Camping World Truck Series debut July 19 at Eldora Speedway before returning to redemption in the Baldwin Brothers Racing/Fox Paving – AMSOIL/DRC/Claxton Mopar sprinter Wednesday at Terre Haute, a place in which he’s won the two most recent times he’s visited.
“It was pretty frustrating knowing we were the best car and had a caution come out soon as we take the lead,” Windom laments. “It was hard to pass and I knew we were dead in the water after that. I’ve got the easy job of driving the car, so I’m always ready to get back in the seat, but my guys definitely need a day off to regroup for the second half of the week.”
Contingency award winners Monday at Gas City I-69 Speedway include Chase Stockon (ProSource Fast Qualifier), Josh Hodges (Simpson Race Products 1st Heat Winner), Aaron Farney (Competition Suspension, Inc. 2nd Heat Winner), Robert Ballou (Chalk Stix 3rd Heat Winner), Kody Swanson (Indy Race Parts 4th Heat Winner), Tyler Courtney (KSE Racing Products Hard Charger) and Jarett Andretti (Wilwood Brakes 13th Place Finisher).
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USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: July 10, 2017 – Gas City, Indiana – Gas City I-69 Speedway – “Indiana Sprint Week” – Presented by Camping World
PROSOURCE QUALIFYING: 1. Chase Stockon, 32, 32 TBI-11.837; 2. Kevin Thomas Jr., 9K, KT-11.925; 3. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-11.930; 4. Thomas Meseraull, 5B, Briscoe-12.014; 5. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-12.032; 6. Dave Darland, 71p, Phillips/Curb-Agajanian-12.057; 7. Shane Cottle, 57, Hazen-12.138; 8. Chris Windom, 5, Baldwin-12.144; 9. Kyle Cummins, 3R, Rock Steady-12.158; 10. Chad Boespflug, 69, Dynamics-12.183; 11. Brady Bacon, 63, Dooling/Hayward-12.198; 12. Jon Stanbrough, 81, Stanbrough-12.203; 13. Hunter Schuerenberg, 44, Pace-12.208; 14. Justin Grant, 11, McGhee-12.244; 15. Jarett Andretti, 18, Andretti-12.292; 16. Kody Swanson, 2E, Epperson-12.317; 17. Josh Hodges, 74x, Hodges-12.359; 18. Aaron Farney, 15F, DCT-12.429; 19. Tyler Courtney, 23c, TOPP-12.435; 20. A.J. Hopkins, 4J, 4J Motorsports-12.458; 21. Matt Westfall, 54, Westfall-12.462; 22. Tyler Hewitt, 97x, One More Time-12.498; 23. Brody Roa, 91R, BR-12.505; 24. Tyler Thomas, 04, Burton-12.596; 25. Ryan Bernal, 17GP, Dutcher-12.596; 26. Isaac Chapple, 52, LNR/Chapple-12.625; 27. Logan Jarrett, 29, Jarrett-12.643; 28. Brady Short, 11p, Pottorff-12.766; 29. Matt Goodnight, 39, Goodnight-12.772; 30. Tyler Clem, 14, Clem/TSR-12.798; 31. Kyle Robbins, 17R, KR-12.907; 32. Ted Hines, 12x, Hines-12.918.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Hodges, 2. Schuerenberg, 3. Leary, 4. Stockon, 5. Westfall, 6. Bernal, 7. Cummins, 8. Goodnight. NT
COMPETITION SUSPENSION (CSI) SECOND HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Farney, 2. Grant, 3. K. Thomas, 4. Boespflug, 5. Darland, 6. Hewitt, 7. Clem, 8. Chapple. 2:08.22
CHALK STIX THIRD HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Ballou, 2. Andretti, 3. Cottle, 4. Roa, 5. Bacon, 6. Courtney, 7. Jarrett, 8. Robbins. NT
INDY RACE PARTS FOURTH HEAT: (10 laps) 1. Swanson, 2. Meseraull, 3. Hopkins, 4. T. Thomas, 5. Stanbrough, 6. Short, 7. Hines, 8. Windom. NT
SEMI: (12 laps) 1. Bacon, 2. Darland, 3. Windom, 4. Courtney, 5. Short, 6. Cummins, 7. Bernal, 8. Stanbrough, 9. Hewitt, 10. Chapple, 11. Westfall, 12. Jarrett, 13. Hines, 14. Robbins, 15. Clem. NT
FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. C.J. Leary, 2. Robert Ballou, 3. Chris Windom, 4. Chad Boespflug, 5. Brady Bacon, 6. Shane Cottle, 7. Thomas Meseraull, 8. Justin Grant, 9. Chase Stockon, 10. Josh Hodges, 11. Tyler Courtney, 12. Dave Darland, 13. Jarett Andretti, 14. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 15. Kody Swanson, 16. Brady Short, 17. Hunter Schuerenberg, 18. Kyle Cummins, 19. Aaron Farney, 20. Tyler Thomas, 21. Brody Roa, 22. Ryan Bernal, 23. A.J. Hopkins. NT
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FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-2 Cottle, Laps 3-20 Meseraull, Laps 21-25 Ballou, Laps 26-30 Leary.
KSE RACING PRODUCTS HARD CHARGER: Tyler Courtney (18th to 11th)
WILWOOD BRAKES 13TH PLACE FINISHER: Jarett Andretti
NEW AMSOIL NATIONAL SPRINT POINTS: 1-Grant-1186, 2-Windom-1173, 3-Boespflug-1017, 4-Stockon-1014, 5-K. Thomas-964, 6-Courtney-960, 7-Bacon-913, 8-Leary-903, 9-Darland-801, 10-Meseraull-778.
NEW INDIANA SPRINT WEEK Presented by Camping World POINTS: 1-Leary-217, 2-Meseraull-204, 3-Bacon-203, 4-Ballou-188, 5-K. Thomas-181, 6-Windom-180, 7-Darland-178, 8-Courtney-154, 9-Hodges-135, 10-Andretti-128.
NEXT  USAC AMSOIL SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE: July 12 – Terre Haute, Indiana – Terre Haute Action Track – “Don Smith Classic” – “Indiana Sprint Week” – Presented by Camping World
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