JACKSON, Minn. — Aaron Reutzel and Jody Rosenboom were triumphant on Friday evening during the season opener at Jackson Motorplex.
Reutzel used a late-race pass to score the Midwest Sprint Touring Series and Midwest Power Series victory while Rosenboom led the distance of the Wyffels Hybrids RaceSaver Sprint Cars main event on Tweeter Contracting and Boji Spudz Night.
Chase Randall was in command throughout the majority of the 25-lap 360ci winged sprint car A Main as he led the first 23 laps. Reutzel closed in the second half of the race and pulled within two tenths of a second with three laps remaining when he threw a slide job entering turn three.
Randall turned back underneath Reutzel to reclaim the lead exiting turn four. He then dove to the bottom entering turn one, but clipped the inside berm and slid up the track. That allowed Reutzel to drive by en route to the $3,000 victory.
“I needed lapped traffic really bad,” he said. “I didn’t think we were going to get enough traffic there. He slid that one guy real hard over here and killed his momentum. Luckily the lapped car got out of my way where I was able to get the run on him and slide him. I think I got a little lucky he got on the berm there because I thought I was going to have another shot at sliding him and he protected so I didn’t get a good run on him. He got on the berm and kinda got over the cushion. We’ll take them any way we can get them.”
Wayne Johnson and Kaleb Johnson also passed Randall at the end to round out the podium, respectively. Randall finished fourth and Riley Goodno rounded out the top five.
Matt Juhl and Kaleb Johnson set quick time during their group’s qualifying session to open the competition.
Rosenboom dominated the 20-lap Wyffels Hybrids RaceSaver Sprint Cars feature as he lapped up to 10th place. Rosenboom efficiently weaved through traffic to build a lead of approximately three and a half seconds with a handful of laps remaining, but he was stymied trying to lap a driver in the closing circuits. That allowed Brandon Halverson to cut the advantage to under one second on the final lap, but Rosenboom hit his marks and held on to win by 0.963 seconds.
“Steve gives me a really good car,” he said. “It’s a privilege to get to do this. We have a good time. We don’t get to do it a lot, but when we do we seem to have good success.”
Halverson was the runner up with Dusty Ballenger placing third, Brandon Buysse fourth and Trevor Serbus fifth.
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