NEW RICHMOND, Wis. — On a day when fans had to pass through state-of-the-art screening procedures to enter Cedar Lake Speedway, Ricky Weiss’ late model tested positive during post-race inspection.
After outrunning Cade Dillard over the final laps in a finish that brought the fans to their feet, Weiss’ No. 7 tested positive for an illegal quarter-panel height in post-race inspection; handing the victory in Thursday’s first Elimination Showdown to Dillard.
Taking the lead from Dillard on lap two of the third five-lap segment, Weiss roared to the front of the field and looked poised to run away with the $3,000 special event win until the final restart.
With eight cars in the final eight-lap round, Weiss and Dillard distanced themselves from the rest of the pack and set themselves up for an epic showdown at the finish.
Both World of Outlaws stars ran side-by-side in turn three coming to the checkered flag, but it was Weiss who motored through the corner and gained the edge to beat Dillard to the stripe by 0.172 seconds.
However, failing to pass post-race inspection for an illegal quarter-panel height, Weiss was docked three positions to finish fourth; which handed Dillard the $3,000 victory in the first-ever Elimination Showdown at Cedar Lake Speedway.
“I feel like we’ve got a great car under our belts right now,” said Dillard. “As long as we can keep making the right adjustments, we’ll be good. We’ve still got a long way to go and there’s a lot of good cars here, but this is for sure about as confident as I’ve ever been. Our momentum will run out eventually, it always does, we just have to milk it as long we can.”
Before the Elimination Showdown brought the house down, a pair of qualifying sessions set the stage for the rest of the weekend at Cedar Lake Speedway.
Jimmy Mars laid the groundwork by setting fast time in Friday’s portion with a lap 13.307 seconds. Brandon Sheppard was the top dog in Saturday’s show with a time of 13.907 seconds.
The finish:
Elimination Showdown (23 laps): 1. 97-Cade Dillard [1][$3,000]; 2. 20-Rodney Sanders [3][$1,500]; 3. 1-Brandon Sheppard [6][$1,200]; 4. 7-Ricky Weiss [5][$1,000]; 5. 29V-Darrell Lanigan [9][$900]; 6. 99JR-Frank Heckenast [8][$825]; 7. 28-Dennis Erb [10][$775]; 8. 58-A.J. Diemel [2][$700]; 9. 12-Ashton Winger [7][$600]; 10. 20RT-Ricky Thornton [15][$600]; 11. B1-Brent Larson [14][$600]; 12. 56-Colton Horner [13][$600]; 13. 11-Pat Doar [16][$400]; 14. 11G-James Giossi [4][$400]; 15. 28M-Jimmy Mars [12][$400]; 16. 0-Scott Bloomquist [11][$400]; 17. 18-Chase Junghans [17][$200]; 18. 15-Nick Anvelink [19][$200]; 19. 99b-Boom Briggs [18][$200]; 20. 6m-Jeff Massingill [20][$200]; 21. 16-Rusty Griffaw [21][$110]; 22. 10-Paul Parker [22][$110]; 23. 15h-Steve Hucovski [23][$110]; 24. 1e-Caley Emerson [24][$110]