SAPULPA, Okla. — Hank Davis has been on a tear as of late at Creek County Speedway with five recent feature wins.
So, it came as little surprise that when the wings were shed, Davis came away with the $6,000 winner’s share in Sunday night’s eighth annual Ironman 55 for 305-ci champ sprint cars atop the quarter-mile clay oval.
After starting eighth, Davis assumed the point on the 35th round and led the final 21 circuits aboard the Hank Davis Racing No. 1h sprint car sans brakes.
“I lost my brakes with 21 laps to go,” Davis explained. “It got pretty tricky after that.”
While Davis worked his way up to fourth by the midway point, pole-starter Fred Mattox paced the opening 27 rounds before Johnny Kent slid into the lead.
Kent paced the field for just eight laps before Davis made his way to second and then took command after contact with Kent left the previous leader sliding to a halt in turn three.
With the surging duo of Andrew Deal and Kyle Clark moving in to chase the leader over the final 15 rounds, Davis held the point. A final caution with nine circuits remaining gave Deal one last chance to make a pair of charges, but it wasn’t enough to slow Davis’ charge to the stripe.
After getting caught up in a lap-12 melee and getting upside down, Clark raced back through the field and battled his way past Deal to snare the runner-up position with three laps remaining.
“I think someone got into the car ahead of me and he got into the wall, then I had nowhere to go,” Clark said of the early incident.
Deal, who worked from the tail of the B Main after an early incident to snare the final transfer position, earned hard charger honors by racing through the field to claim the show position after challenging for the point.
“I got up to second and I thought I had it,” Deal said afterward.
After pacing the first half of the race, Mattox crossed the stripe fourth with Texas shoe Jett Hayes racing from 18th to round out the top five.
The finish:
Feature (55 Laps): 1. 1h-Hank Davis (8), 2. 9$-Kyle Clark (13), 3. 15d-Andrew Deal (23), 4. 26m-Fred Mattox (1), 5. 83-Jett Hays (18), 6. 42-Grady Mercer (14), 7. 24h-Ty Hulsey (12), 8. 28-Joe Wood, Jr. (7), 9. 55-Johnny Kent (3), 10. 938-Bradley Fezard (5), 11. 51m-Kevin Cummings (19), 12. 5$-Chris Andrews (15), 13. 22-David Stephenson (22), 14. 24T-T.J. Herrell (6), 15. 5x-Matt Sherrell (10), 16. 2-Whit Gastineau (9), 17. 71w-Weston Gorham (17), 18. 22m-Rees Moran (24), 19. 8x-Austin Shores (16), 20. 48-Nathan Moore (2), 21. 13$-Danny Smith (4), 22. 23a-Brett Wilson (20), 23. 50-Cody Whitworth (11), 24. 7F-Noah Harris (21).