PETALUMA, Calif. – Shawn Jones was the rabbit no one could catch Saturday night as he ran away from the field repeatedly to claim the feature race for the Joe Hunt Magnetos Wingless Series sprint cars at Petaluma Speedway.
Starting on the inside of the second row, Jones was in a three-way battle for the top spot when he powered under polesitter Nick Robfogel on lap nine to claim a lead he would never give up despite three yellow flags that bunched the field up behind him and lapped traffic.
On each restart, Jones rocketed several car lengths ahead of Bradley Terrell and Robfogel, who were in a hammer and tong match of their own for the runner-up spot, and then effortlessly wove through lapped traffic using both the low and high lines around the three-eighths-mile oval.
“I had no idea I had a big lead,” Jones confessed. “I just knew that with Terrell behind me I had to go as fast as I could.”
Terrell and Robfogel had one last shot at Jones on a restart with three laps to go but found themselves in a tough battle for the runner-up spot as Jones cruised to the checkers. After chasing Terrell for most of the race, Robfogel took advantage of a small mistake by Terrell and turned under him in turn two on the last lap to claim the runner up spot.
“I knew that once Shawn got out in front, he would be hard to catch,” said Terrell. As for the mistake that cost him the runner-up spot, he said “I had been running the high line around turns one and two the last few laps and it was fast, but on the last lap I missed my spot by about half a car length,” which gave Robfogel the opening on the bottom lane he needed to claim the runner-up spot.
The finish:
Shawn Jones, Nick Robfogel, Bradley Terrell, Daniel Whitley, Geoff Ensign, Matt Streeter, Jarrett Soares, Brent Steck, Marcus Hardina, Kevin Box, Tony Bernard, Eathon Lanfri, James Williams, Cameron Martin, Nathan Shank, Sparky Howard, Bob Newberry, Dennis Furia, Kaimi Moniz-Costa, Tim Sherman.