SELINSGROVE, Pa. – Brian Brown badly wants to add to his Midwest accolades and his fierce weekend in Central Pennsylvania exhibited just that.
Twenty-four hours after one of his sweetest moments in a sprint car – win No. 1 at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pa. – the flip side of his competitive edge cut through his typical, easygoing character.
“When you start on the pole and lead laps, you shouldn’t lose,” Brown said, referencing his backslide from the pole to a third-place finish in Saturday’s Jim Nace Memorial National Open at Selinsgrove (Pa.) Speedway. “We just weren’t good enough. There’s no way you can sugarcoat it, candy-coat it.
“It means a lot, but that’s last night,” Brown added of his maiden Williams Grove win. “We’re disappointed with tonight. You’re only as good as your last race.”
Fall time trips to Pennsylvania Posse land have become tradition for Brown and his No. 21 team since 2017.
The central reason for that is because Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway – where Brown ranks fifth all-time in wins with 56 to go along with five sprint car titles – ends weekly racing for the year in August.
But Brown doesn’t make these September excursions for the heck of it, though the past three years may have been dull.
“I’ve come here to [Central PA] the last two years and felt like, ‘Man, we’re off,’” Brown said at the beginning of the month. “We were doing too much crazy stuff every single night.”
Now Brown is finally comfortable again.
Uncle Danny Lasoski, Brown’s new crew chief, brings the right blend of basics and knowledge from a National Sprint Car Hall of Fame driving career to the table.
Brown’s eight 410 wins this year match what he accomplished in 2019 and ‘20 combined.
There is still plenty of racing left in the season and a chance to eclipse double figures isn’t out of the question. Win No. 9 just slipped out of reach Saturday.
Brown was five cars away from landing fast-time in the $20,075-to-win event. Then entered Anthony Macri, one of the fastest cars in Central PA during the last two years, who topped Brown by .139 seconds.
From there, Brown couldn’t keep pace with Macri and eventually lost a late battle for second to Danny Dietrich.
“After the heat we made some changes to keep us free, and we were too free from the get-go [after the halfway open red] on lap 21,” Brown said. “We got beat by two better guys. I think I was a bit … actually, equally to Danny [Dietrich]. But Anthony could turn and drive, and when I tried to cut [the corners], I couldn’t do the things he could.”
“Like I said, first and third, we are disappointed, but we’re not ungrateful,” said Brown, who turns his attention to this weekend’s World of Outlaws NOS Energy Sprint Car Series National Open at Williams Grove. “We know how tough it is out here.”