TULARE, Calif. — An eventful final night of the 28th edition of Trophy Cup was headlined by Shane Golobic claiming his third championship in the coveted event.
The Fremont, Calif., native is one of the best to ever hail from California and his title further cemented his place in history. The trio of Trophy Cups equaled him with Tim Kaeding and Jac Haudenschild for second most all time, just one behind Brent Kaeding’s record of four.
All three of Golobic’s wins have come at Thunderbowl Raceway, a record he now solely owns as no other driver has claimed three in Tulare since the Trophy Cup moved there in 2005.
Golobic’s first two Trophy Cup wins came in 2016 and ’17, and those were with the Keith Day No. 22 team. This year he wheeled the Matt Wood Racing No. 17w to the victory, and with his brother, Dustin, on the wrenches, the celebration was all the more special.
“It’s just chemistry,” Shane said of why the two work so well together. “You can’t fake that. It’s brother-to-brother. Our dynamic has changed a little bit lately. He’s got a big boy job during the week, but he shows up and puts all this effort in. I can’t thank him enough.”
In the feature, Golobic went in as the high point man and pieced together a memorable drive from 20th to third to seal the deal.
Wise Wins
While Golobic’s glory was the main story, the driver who crossed the finish line first was plenty noteworthy as Angola, Ind., driver, Zeb Wise, claimed the 50-lap finale in his first Trophy Cup after starting on the front row.
The victory marked his first since joining Rudeen Racing earlier this year. Kalib Henry posed an early threat to Wise, taking the top spot for a few laps, but Wise stayed focused and snatched the lead back for good on lap 20.
“Really happy to finally get a win in this thing,” Wise said. “Every video I’ve watched of this place is bang the boards all the way around. I felt really good in (turns) one and two. I feel like once he (Henry) got by me I kept pace with him pretty well. I think I got together with a lapped car there and went to the bottom in (turns) three and four and felt really good and really just stuck with that. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen anyone run the bottom here for that long. That just speaks to how good my car was for it to work down there.”
It was nearly an ideal ending to Wise’s first Trophy Cup. While winning the points would’ve made it better, winning the race and seeing a former midget teammate of his take the title left him very satisfied.
“Overall champion is what you want to go for,” Wise said. “We did everything we could today to try to get us in a position to do that, and it just wasn’t enough. If there was anyone besides me, I wanted to win this deal it was Shane.”
The standings showed Wise in 19th when the feature started, and the win allowed him to climb all the way up to fourth in the final rundown.
Day Rolls To Runner-Up
Adding even more impressive results to his early résumé, Corey Day wheeled from 17th to fifth in Saturday’s main event, earning him enough points to claim second in the Trophy Cup standings.
Day is now two-for-two on Trophy Cup top-fives after finishing fourth in his event debut last year.
Fourth is exactly where Day was slotted when the green flag waved on the feature and he managed to jump two spots with his strong charge of advancing 12 spots.
Another Podium For Abreu
Rico Abreu finished his Trophy Cup with a second-place result in the feature.
The top-three continued the recent tear the driver of the Rowdy Energy No. 24 has been on at Trophy Cup. Abreu now owns podium finishes in five of his last nine nights at Trophy Cup dating back to 2019.
The effort also gave him sole possession of fourth place on the all-time list of most Trophy Cup feature podiums as he now owns seven. Abreu trails only Tim Kaeding (13), Brent Kaeding (10) and Jason Meyers (eight).
“This is a tough track, especially when it gets like that,” Abreu said. “It’s very demanding. We had a 30-lap run there, I’d say, and the intensity really gets up.”
Other Notes
• After terrible luck on both prelims, Justin Sanders and Cole Macedo salvaged their weekends with Sanders finishing ninth in the finale and Macedo earning seventh.
• Tyler Courtney completed the weekend with a third-place result in the points in his second attempt at Trophy Cup.
• In his Trophy Cup debut, Landon Brooks impressed in a ride he was unfamiliar with before the weekend, the Tiner-Hirst No. 94th. Brooks capped Saturday with a top-10 effort against the stout field.
• The continued pursuit of a Trophy Cup title for Kyle Hirst brought more heartbreak as Hirst entered the finale third in points only to get caught up in a nasty crash with Tim Kaeding, ending both of their nights.
• Kalib Henry added more proof that he’s a West Coast driver to watch by leading laps in the finale before bringing the Jensen No. 5j home fourth at a track where he doesn’t have many laps.