ODESSA, Mo. — Brian Brown’s unexpected visit to I-70 Motorsports Park very nearly netted a $5,000 payday in Saturday night’s Inaugural 360 Nationals atop the half-mile clay oval.
But an ailing powerplant coupled with a late caution opened the door for Oklahoma City’s Wayne Johnson to slide into the lead and pace the final two rounds to collect the payday with his third Lucas Oil ASCS National Tour feature win of the season aboard the Select Coatings Two-C Racing No. 2c Sprint Car.
Johnson gunned into the lead from the pole position in the 30-lapper, countered a Brown slider in the opening pair of corners and proceeded to set the pace for 15 rounds before Brown capitalized on lapped traffic to take command at the midway point.
“I knew he had to be back there somewhere, but I wasn’t sure how close he was,” Johnson explained. “I was trying to be cautious through traffic and I guess I was being a little too cautious.”
Traffic was a factor from the early going with the lead duo of Johnson and Brown reaching the tail of the filed by the sixth round as Jason Martin and Blake Hahn kept them within striking distance as well.
Playing a high-speed game of chess through heavy traffic over the next 13 circuits, Brown pressured Johnson before taking advantage to race into the lead on the 16th lap.
Brown kept Johnson at bay over the ensuing rounds, but trouble was brewing for the Casey’s/FVP No. 21b sprint car with smoke beginning to emanate from the machine.
Brown held the point even after a lap-19 caution for Ben Brown, staying ahead of Johnson and Martin, who joined in on the lead chase.
As Brown’s engine continued to sour, a final caution setting up a two-lap dash to the stripe proved too much to overcome as Johnson charged past Brown in turns one and two and raced on to the checkered flag ahead of Brown and Martin.
“I could tell there was something wrong with his car, but wasn’t sure what it was,” Johnson explained. “You could tell he wasn’t accelerating off the corners as well as he should have been.”
Brown concurred, explaining that, “I could still go pretty well as long we kept going, I just kept changing lines and trying to make myself as wide as possible. But I just couldn’t take off that well on that last restart, and with a guy like Wayne behind me, he’s experienced enough to know how to take advantage.”
Martin settled for third, commenting that, “I thought I might have a shot at getting those two guys on that last restart. I thought they might get to sliding each other and mess each other up, but that didn’t quite work out.”
Brandon Anderson raced to the stripe in fourth with Garet Williamson charging through the field from 17th to round out the top five.
The finish:
Feature (30 Laps): 1. 2c-Wayne Johnson (1), 2. 21b-Brian Brown (3), 3. 36-Jason Martin (2), 4. 55b-Brandon Anderson (6), 5. 24-Garet Williamson (17), 6. 95-Matt Covington (9), 7. 11a-Austin O’Neal (12), 8. 7-Tony Shilling (8), 9. 0-Jake Griffin (11), 10. 10-Landon Britt (21), 11. 17b-Ryan Bickett (24), 12. 52-Blake Hahn (4), 13. 7c-Chris Morgan (20), 14. 2-Dylan Opdahl (22), 15. 3p-Sawyer Phillips (10), 16. 187-Landon Crawley (16), 17. 2J-Zach Blurton (19), 18. 50z-Zach Chappell (18), 19. 7b-Ben Brown (14), 20. 21-Gunner Ramey (13), 21. 98p-Miles Paulus (15), 22. 16-Dustin Clark (23), 23. 1x-Tim Crawley (5), 24. 45x-Kyler Johnson (7).