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Bacon Beats Ballou for Cedar Lake Score

New Richmond, Wisconsin…….Although his title defense has been difficult at times, Brady Bacon took his sixth win of the season on Saturday night at Cedar Lake Speedway, marking a new high water mark for both himself and Hoffman Auto Racing, the all-time winningest AMSOIL National Sprint Car team which had never seen a six-win campaign. Their Broken Arrow, Oklahoma driver ran down race-long leader Robert Ballou to snatch victory with just six to go aboard the Dynamics, Inc. – Mean Green #69 Triple X/Williams Mopar.

“With the situation we’re in, we can take some chances and try to rack up some wins here. We were able to get that line working and just lucked out to catch Robert at just the right time to take advantage of traffic where he lost his momentum and I could get by him real quick, and have the bottom blocked into three so he couldn’t slide me. We haven’t quite had the consistency this year that we had in 2014, but it’s fun to win races and we’ve been doing that lately,” Bacon said.

Ballou and Justin Grant traded the lead on the opening lap after starting on the front row together, but Ballou turned under Grant’s slider to lead coming to complete the lap before caution appeared. From there, Ballou pulled away as Grant and Bacon raced for second, with Dave Darland staying with them in fourth.

On lap 13, Todd Lehr lost his left-rear wheel coming down the frontstretch and slid to the inside wall, necessitating the second caution. On the restart, ProSource “Fast Qualifier” Chase Stockon got caught up with a lapped car in front of him and hopped to a stop in turn-four, collecting both Bill Balog and Jarett Andretti, who restarted. Stockon visited the work area but couldn’t make it back out.

Fifth-running Kevin Thomas, Jr. then had an issue and turn-three and got up into the wall to bring out the final caution with 16 laps to go. The man on the move was Chris Windom, who was using a line similar to Grant and Bacon with good results. Those three and others entered above the cushion in turn-one and diamonded down across the track to catch the bottom off turn-two.

Bacon was able to use that to pass Grant for second on lap 16, while Windom slid past Darland in turn-three for fourth on lap 18. As Ballou encountered traffic, Bacon was reeling to make it a fight for the top spot. Windom caught Grant on lap 21 and executed the same maneuver for third. On lap 24, Ballou slid across turn-two to the top as Bacon caught the bottom down the backstretch and darted up in front for the lead into turn-three.

Ballou stayed with Bacon and looked to mount a charge to re-take the lead, but that ended when he nearly collected the turn-three wall on lap 27. Bacon was flawless out front and cruised to the 2.004-second victory over Ballou, who again increased his point lead with the Blakesley Auto – TwisterX #12 Maxim/Ott.

“I’ve said a million times, I know pretty quickly if we have a car to win the race right when we push off, and I just knew we were a bit too good too early in the race. Tonight just wasn’t the night. We changed quite a few things tonight to chase it, but it’s one of those deals where you have to be better late in the race. Traffic was tough on us, and he got the run to blow my doors off there. I tried to make a run back at him, but tonight I’m glad to be second and in one piece with a good points night,” Ballou said.

Windom was reeling in Ballou over the final few laps but came up short, capping a fine run from 12th to finish third in the Rick Pollock – Bates Commodities #21x Maxim/Advanced.

“It took a while for my line to work right, but once guys got spaced out some and we got it packed down some up above the cushion, I could diamond off two and get that big run down the backstretch to slide guys. That’s basically where I got all my passing done. Rick gave me a good race car tonight, and I was still running hard to the end trying to catch those guys. I’m happy to come from 12th to third – now I just need to qualify a little better,” Windom said.

Grant came home fourth in the Baldwin Brothers Racing – Fox Paving #5 DRC/Claxton Mopar, and Darland rounded out the top-five in the Phillips/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports – Trench Shoring #71P DRC/Foxco.

AMSOIL USAC SPRINT CAR NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP RACE RESULTS: August 8, 2015 – New Richmond, Wisconsin – Cedar Lake Speedway

QUALIFYING: 1. Chase Stockon, 32, 32/TBI-13.306; 2. Kevin Thomas, Jr., 17RW, Dutcher-13.378; 3. Brady Bacon, 69, Dynamics-13.439; 4. Dave Darland, 71P, Phillips/Curb-Agajanian-13.534; 5. Justin Grant, 5, Baldwin-13.564; 6. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-13.632; 7. Jarett Andretti, 18, Andretti Autosport Short Track-13.748; 8. Aaron Farney, 15F, Farney-13.774; 9. C.J. Leary, 30, Leary-13.778; 10. Jon Stanbrough, 81, Stanbrough-13.808; 11. Tracy Hines, 4, THR-13.817; 12. Chris Windom, 21x, Pollock-13.852; 13. Joe Bares, 19, Test-13.943; 14. Steve Irwin, 0x, Flying Zero-13.980; 15. Todd Lehr, 16, Lehr-14.009; 16. Rob Caho, Jr., 78, Caho/Krueger-14.170; 17. Bill Balog, 2, Lein-14.319; 18. Tony Rost, 99, Rost-14.332; 19. Steve Thomas, 20, Thomas-14.436; 20. Alex Schriever, 0, Davis-14.512; 21. Brandon Stevenson, 0s, Stevenson-14.740; 22. Ray Seach, 16L, Lehr-15.099; 23. Jim Scanlon, 5J, Scanlon-15.184; 24. Bryon Walters, 5w, Speed Monkeys-15.550; 25. Kevin Seidler, 2K, Seidler-15.675.

FIRST HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Darland; 2. Bares; 3. Stockon; 4. Andretti; 5. Stanbrough; 6. Caho; 7. S. Thomas; 8. Seach; 9. Seidler. 1:52.68

SECOND HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Irwin; 2. Farney; 3. K. Thomas; 4. Hines; 5. Grant; 6. Schriever; 7. Scanlon; 8. Balog. NT

THIRD HEAT: (8 laps) 1. Leary; 2. Windom; 3. Bacon; 4. Ballou; 5. Rost; 6. Stevenson; 7. Walters; 8. Lehr. 1:52.59

SEMI: (12 laps) 1. Balog; 2. Caho; 3. Schriever; 4. S. Thomas; 5. Seach; 6. Stevenson; 7. Lehr; 8. Scanlon; 9. Seidler; 10. Walters. NT

FEATURE: (30 laps) 1. Brady Bacon; 2. Robert Ballou; 3. Chris Windom; 4. Justin Grant; 5. Dave Darland; 6. C.J. Leary; 7. Aaron Farney; 8. Jon Stanbrough; 9. Tracy Hines; 10. Bill Balog; 11. Jarett Andretti; 12. Steve Irwin; 13. Rob Caho, Jr.; 14. Joe Bares; 15. Alex Schriever; 16. Steve Thomas; 17. Ray Seach; 18. Kevin Thomas, Jr.; 19. Chase Stockon; 20. Todd Lehr; 21. Brandon Stevenson; 22. Tony Rost. NT

FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-23 Ballou, Laps 24-30 Bacon.

NEW AMSOIL NATIONAL SPRINT POINTS: 1-Ballou-1,455; 2-Stockon-1,371; 3-Darland-1,368; 4-Bacon-1,293; 5-Stanbrough-1,253; 6-K.Thomas-1,167; 7-Leary-989; 8-Windom-941; 9-Hines-905; 10-Grant-886.

NEXT AMSOIL NATIONAL SPRINT RACE: August 9 – Sun Prairie, Wisconsin – Angell Park Speedway

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