CRESCO, Iowa — Defending series champion Chad Simpson picked up his second consecutive victory on Thursday night as the Lucas Oil MLRA made its first visit to the Cresco Speedway.
The four-tenths-mile facility play out to some exciting racing under very fast track conditions in front of a packed grandstand.
Race promotors and drivers opted to adjust Thursdays race format to run time trials which found Chris Simpson setting the overall fast time with a 16.177-second lap over the Capital Chassis of Tyler Bruening, who clocked in at 16.212 seconds.
Polesitter Will Vaught started on the front row alongside of Simpson, setting up a rematch of the 2018 series championship battle. Simpson took advantage of the outside momentum to seize the race lead of the exit of turn two on the races initial circuit and quickly jumped out to a sizeable lead.
The first of two cautions flew on lap 14 when Sunoco Rookie Candidate Joseph Gorby got loose in turn four and darted to the infield directly in front of Simpson and fellow leaders, Vaught, Bruening, and Chris Simpson.
Simpson again jumped out to a comfortable advantage on the restart, while Bruening took advantage of his outside line restarting position to overtake Vaught for the second position. Simpson was initially able to jump back out to a sizeable lead, but as the long green flag run continued Bruening was able to close the gap on the race leader to only a handful of car lengths.
Bruening, who was chasing Simpson for his first series win for the second consecutive series event, got a big break with just four laps remaining when the caution flew for a spin in turns one and two.
However, it was the veteran Simpson leaving the field on the restart and cruising to his thirteenth career MLRA series win. Bruening claimed second, his best to date with the MLRA, while Vaught, Chris Simpson, and leading Sunoco Rookie driver Logan Martin completed the top five.
“It was a matter of winning that race into turn number one,” Simpson said. “I knew this place was so big and gets so fast, that the clean air would be so important. I knew I could use the whole race track when I was up there, and the more it cleaned up in the middle of the race track the better I was throughout the race.”
The finish:
Feature (40 Laps): 1.Chad Simpson 2.Tyler Bruening 3.Will Vaught 4.Chris Simpson 5.Logan Martin 6.Mitch McGrath 7.Spencer Diercks 8.Jason Rauen 9.Dave Eckrich 10.Joel Callahan 11.Jeremy Grady 12.J.C. Wyman 13.Ben Seemann 14.Joseph Gorby 15.Skip Frey 16. Jake Neal (DNS)