BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Chris Windom may have schooled Buddy Kofoid once during Friday night’s Indiana Midget Week round at Bloomington Speedway, but Kofoid didn’t let it happen a second time.
After being passed by Windom on a lap-20 restart, Kofoid returned the favor the next time around with a deep turn-one slider that gave him the lead for good in the 30-lapper at the quarter-mile dirt oval.
From there, Kofoid mastered a final restart with six laps left for his sixth career USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget Series win and series-leading third of the season aboard the Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports No. 67.
In doing so, he became the second different winner in as many Indiana Midget Week events and rose to the top of the mini-series point standings with six races to go over the next eight nights.
“To win an Indiana Midget Week show is probably one of the bigger midget wins of my career,” Kofoid said. “It feels pretty good to beat some of the best, straight-up, head-to-head. I had a blast racing with Chris; that was so much fun. If you didn’t like that, I don’t know what to tell you.
“That was hard racing back and forth.”
It was Windom who got the jump off the outside pole on the initial start Friday night, leading uncontested early as cautions for a pair of Clauson Marshall Racing cars slowed the pace.
First, it was fast qualifier Corey Day, who slowed down the backstretch with four laps in the books to click the yellow lights on. Then, it was his teammate Cole Bodine, who spun in turn four on lap eight.
Both times, Windom easily worked clear of polesitter Bryant Wiedeman and the rest of the chasing pack, but it was Kofoid who was on the move after sliding Wiedeman for second on the fifth rotation.
Kofoid then tracked down Windom, making his first try for the lead in turn four on lap seven before a slider war broke out following the lap-nine restart from Bodine’s woes – the two leaders going at it tooth-and-nail for control.
Kofoid slid Windom in turn four on lap 10, but Windom powered back underneath. When Kofoid tried the move on the other end of the speedway on lap 12, Windom again rolled back past Kofoid.
A third try yielded no results on lap 14 when Kofoid looked low in turn one, but the Penngrove, Calif., native was determined. He made the pass stick in turn three coming to halfway and quickly opened up a 1.079-second lead over Windom in just two laps after taking control of the race away.
“When we ran the slider line in three and four and caught Chris, he saw it, then he started doing it,” Kofoid recalled. “I was like, ‘man,’ I don’t want to say it was game over, but I thought it would be pretty hard to get to him after that. I figured early in the race that the top was really far around into three and I figured that if I could be stuck enough as far as throttle control and keep it kind of straight up to the cushion, we’d have a shot to catch him pretty quickly.
“It wasn’t easy, though,” Kofoid continued.
A flip in turn four and red flag for Chase Randall’s upside-down race car was the last hurdle Kofoid had to clear. After the race resumed with six laps left, though, Kofoid powered away on the outside as Windom tried low, eventually winning by 1.493 seconds.
“Those last six laps, I just told myself ‘don’t get tight, don’t get tight on the curb,’” Kofoid explained. “It worked out really good. The only time we got tight was that restart, and I thought I about gave it away right there. It shows how much speed this car has, to get it right back the next lap and keep on going.”
Windom settled for second, placing himself second to Kofoid by 12 in the updated Indiana Midget Week standings with a quarter of the mini-series complete.
“That was a lot of fun racing with him there,” Windom said of the battle with Kofoid. “We just kind of had to go where each other weren’t. When I was out front, I felt like I was a sitting duck in three and four. I didn’t feel like running the top was that great, but I saw him slide me there and I realized that was a better line. He was just a little better than us there and we couldn’t make quite as much as speed as him, but we’d get shots at him on the restarts and I felt like we had a really good run at it.
“He was just a little bit better than us,” Windom added. “Through three and four, he could run that line a little bit better than I could and we were about the same speed through one and two. I just couldn’t quite figure out where to stick it just right through three and four. That’s where he got away from us. I tried the bottom there on the last restart, trying to make something happen, but it didn’t quite work either.
“I’m happy with the overall result from the night though.”
Kevin Thomas Jr. rolled the bottom from 11th to complete the podium, followed by Brady Bacon and Wiedeman, who earned a solid fifth-place finish after contending among the lead group all night long.
Tanner Thorson, Logan Seavey, Daison Pursley, Justin Grant and Jason McDougal closed the top 10.
Indiana Midget Week continues Saturday night at Lawrenceburg (Ind.) Speedway, the third of eight races in a 10-day period for the USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget Series.
To view complete race results, advance to the next page.