Brookville Pa, (July 21, 2018) Jake Gunn of Pittsburgh Pa and John Britsky bested 23 Super Late Models to the green flag under some tricky track conditions on Friday night at Thunder Mountain Speedway. With the humid temps, sun and wind gusts on the mountain, the drivers were thrown a curve ball with the dry slick conditions.
Gunn jumped to the early lead but
quickly was slowed by the races's first of 7 cautions.On the ensuing restart a mid-pack right car pile up in turn 3 & 4 slowed action again.
With clean up complete they were back under green and Allison Park Pa’s Colton Flinner made a move to 4th from restarting 7th.
Single file restarts were ulilized for the remainder of the feature and at the half way point it was Gunn, Chris Hackett of NY, and Charlie Powell of Brookville, PA, running out front. With Flinner and Britsky in the top 5.
The race's longest green flag run produced Gunn’s largest lead of the night as he pulled out to a comfortable lead. Meanwhile, Flinner made his wo 2nd ater challenging Powell and Hackett. Using the high side on the tricky slick track, Flinner started reeling Gunn in but it wasn’t enough to catch the 7g of Gunn for the $1400 dollar win and a career first feature win.
“I knew if I ran my line they were going to have to fight to get past me but starting up front helped me but you have to take advantage of that when you can and we did," Gunn said.
“ I needed that to be a 35 lap race," Flinner said.
“We got a hot rod right now it’s consistent and I got to thank Freddie Carpenter for the help getting this 4T8 car rolling.”
1 Jake Gunn 2 Colton Flinner 3 Charlie Powell 4 Chris Hackett 5 Matt Lux 6 John Lee 7 John Britsky 8 Bob Dorman 9 Gale Huey 10 Scott Umbaugh 11Paul Kot 12 Joe Petyak 13 Bill Davis 14 Chad McClellan 15 John Weaver 14 Curtis Teets 15 Brandon Grater 16 Kyle Knapp 17 Nate Smith 18 Zach Meyers
23 cars
Heat Winners:
Hackett
Teets
Petyak
6 cautions
 |
| Rick Rarer Photo |
Sodeman Tops Sprints
There were 34 winged 410 Sprint Cars for the special $3000 to win event and two 2nd generation Ohio drivers shared the front row for the 25 lap event in Trey Jacobs and Jack Sodeman Jr of Warren. The initial start was negated for a red flag for Chase Baker on the back stretch. Meanwhile on the front stretch A J Flick ran over a tire that was knocked onto the racing surface causing his sprinter to veer into the infield jumping the victory lane ramp, coming to rest with front end damage. After the clean up the the crew made repairs and Flick returned to start at the tail.
After the wild start Jacobs took the early lead and within 5 laps was pressured by Sodeman who was able to get the lead off of turn 2 when Jacobs slid to the middle grove allowing the 23jr to slip by. From there on Sodeman was able to hold a comfortable lead. 8th starting Sye Lynch of Apollo Pa jumped to the outside grove when no one else was up there paying off with a move to the 3rd spot.
Caution waved for another track tire issue as one was knocked onto the racing groove allowing a shot for Jacobs and Lynch to have a shot at the top spot and figure a way by the 23 car. But the crafty Sodeman was up to the task as he easily endured one last caution to hold onto the $3000 payday
“You can’t complain about that," A happy Sodeman said from his trailer during post race interview. When asked what his strategy was on such a tricky slick track Sodeman said “ I knew I had about 10 laps window to get down what you needed to and I was able to do that and in 3 & 4 I went to the outside and it worked Jacobs slid up in 1& 2 and I took advantage””
2nd place finisher Trey Jacobs had about the same take on the move that allowed Sodeman to get by in turn 1 & 2.
“We heard about this race when we ran Mercer last week and got rained out at home so we want to travel more and get ourselves out there a little bit. And we were almost able to capitalize on that," summed up a positive Jacobs.
“We were fast all night and won the heat," Lynch said. quicker in hot laps the car felt good but the pill draw put us 8 th for the feature”. When asked about his march forward Lynch added “ I found the groove by mistake and it stuck so we just went with it but it went away quickly once I got to 3rd.”
34 sprints on hand
Heat Winners
Jacobs
Lynch
Shelter
Flick
3 cautions
1 red flag
1 Jack Sodeman Jr 2 Trey Jacobs 3 Sye Lunch 4 Dan Shetler 5 Kyle Moody 6 George Hobaugh 7 Brandon Matus 8 Trevor Baker 9 Dan Kuriger 10 A J Flick 11 Michael Bauer 12 Randy Sterling 13 Randy Sterling 14 Anthony Fiore 15 Brad Knab 16 Brent Matus 17 C J Jones 18 Michael Mariano ll
19 Skip Daugherty 20 Dennis Wagner 21 Cody Bova 22 Clay Riney 23 Chase Baker 24 Jim Morris
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