ROCK RAPIDS, Iowa – With an opportunity for an MLRA three-peat on the line Friday at Rapid Speedway, Chad Simpson proved he was up to the challenge.
Simpson scored his third consecutive Lucas Oil MLRA win Friday night in the series first appearance at the three-eighths-mile facility.
Friday’s feature found series point leaders Will Vaught and Mitch McGrath rolling off side by side on the front row for the 40-lap affair. Motor issues on Thursday night at Cresco Speedway forced McGrath and team to make the long haul home to Waukesha, Wis., to pick-up his back-up, before making the long trek back across the Hawkeye state to the Rapid Speedway.
McGrath utilized the momentum on the top of the speedway at the start to shoot to the lead in his new Rocket XR1 Chassis. The lead for McGrath would be short lived, as Vaught was able to charge by in his Clements powered entry to take the lead on lap number three. Not to be outdone, Simpson would return the favor and capture the lead from Vaught just one lap later.
With Simpson out in front he quickly began to distance himself from the field and begin working his way through lapped traffic. As Simpson maintained a comfortable two to three second advantage over the field, lady luck would again strike series point leader and second place running Will Vaught on lap 24, when he slipped up off the speedway in turns one and two, coming to a stop and bringing out the events first caution.
With Vaught tagging the field on the restart, it would be Tad Pospisil taking advantage of the restart by jumping around McGrath for second and taking his shot at stopping the Simpson win streak. Simpson however, jumped back out front and appeared to be headed for his third win in a row, when for the third consecutive event, the caution waved with four laps to go.
Simpson would again make quick work of the final four laps, collecting his third MLRA win of the season and another $3,000 payday over Pospisil. Vaught charged from the tail to snag third at the line from Ben Sukup ,who recorded his best MLRA finish. Logan Martin completed the top five.
“Will (Vaught) and (Mitch) McGrath are both really good, and I figured the track was going to be really fast. You know you get on a fast race track like this and it’s hard to pass. This Black Diamond Chassis was outstanding, and I just have to give a huge hats off to all my sponsors that have helped me out with this deal. I started this team new this year and it’s a lot of fun doing that,” said Simpson.
“Hats off to this Jay Dickens Motor, you know we got a little nervous last night that we hurt it and found out it was just a valve cover gasket,” Simpson continued. “This thing was fast tonight and it just proves right here that Jay builds one hell of a motor.”
The finish:
Chad Simpson, Tad Pospisil, Will Vaught, Ben Sukup, Logan Martin, Jeremy Grady, Mitch McGrath, Jake Neal, Joseph Gorby, Blair Nothdurft, Jordan Heiman, J.C. Wyman, Dylan Fitzpatrick, Skip Frey, Gary Brown Jr., Marty Miers.