3rd Place Finish at Outagamie Speedway’s Fall Brawl Concludes 2018 Season

This past Saturday night, we made the trip west to Outagamie Speedway in Seymour, WI for their first ever Fall Brawl special. Over 190 cars showed up in the pits, with the sportmod division leading the way with 40 entrants.

We drew a 19 for the heat race, which put us 3rd on the grid in the 5th and final heat race. In the first few laps, I tried to go under polesitter Corey Kemkes but wasn’t able to find enough room to make a pass. I shot to the outside line behind Kevin Bethke and got around Kemkes to grab the 2nd spot. From there, I attempted to chase down Bethke and held off Kemkes to finish 2nd.

Originally, the top 10 finishers from the heat race were going to be the invert cars, but a lineup change at the last minute put the top 15 finishers into the invert. As a result, we started 7th in the feature instead of 5th and survived a scare on the opening lap of the feature. I got into the LR tire of Bethke and took some contact to my LR tire which sent me through the infield. Luckily, a complete restart was issued, and I settled quickly into the top 5.

For several laps, I tried to run the bottom of the track, which got me up to the 4th spot in chase of Aaron Butterbrodt. Eventually I gave up the bottom groove and moved up to the high line in pursuit of Butterbrodt. I caught and passed him with about 5 laps remaining and started getting into lapped traffic. At that point, I didn’t know how close I was to the leaders, but as the white flag flew they were within reach. Coming to the checkers, I went around a pair of lapped cars and came within a couple car lengths of Travis Hansen for the 2nd position, finishing in 3rd.

With that finish, we totaled 15 top-5 feature finishes on the season in only 22 starts. We also won 4 heat races and of course finished in the runner-up spot at Luxemburg Speedway in points for the 5th time in the last 6 years. We think that we’re on the right track with our feature setup, and we’re hoping that in 2019 we can capture a few feature wins.

Thank you to all of our 2018 sponsors for supporting us this season: Vlies Custom Race Car Bodies, Swift Springs, 1330 Wraps, Gnome Games, Demon Race Engines, Jerovetz Motorsports Shock Service, Stodola’s IGA, Jet Finishing and Woodwork, Kroll Racing Fabrication, Outback Tavern and Nick’s Carquest.

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