WHEATLAND, Mo. — Chase Junghans scored the biggest MLRA Late Model feature win of his career on Saturday night, capturing the Iconic Apparel 12th annual Ron Jenkins Memorial Presented by Rugged Radios feature at Lucas Oil Speedway.
Junghans took over the lead on lap 16 and held off Friday’s winner Dillon McCowan for a big portion of the final 35 laps. The Manhattan, Kan., driver won $11,000, including a $1,000 bonus from Mary Jenkins in honor of Ron Jenkins, builder of the original Lucas Oil Speedway. It was his third career MLRA victory.
“I’ve always dreaded coming here. I hate coming here … I used to hate coming here,” a smiling Junghans said in victory lane. “I told myself this year I was gonna figure it out. So hopefully we’ll be back here shortly.”
Junghans inherited the lead during a lap-15 caution when pole-starting Cole Wells, after pacing the race to that point, went to the pits with mechanical issues.
“I was just kind of riding around at the beginning, trying to see where those guys would mess up,” Junghans said. “I kind of got to them and getting ready to make a move when (Wells) unfortunately broke.”
McCowan took over second on the restart, but saw Junghans nearly two seconds clear by lap 20. The leader kept stretching it out, building the margin to three seconds by the halfway mark of the race on lap 25.
That’s when McCowan began to slice into the deficit in a hurry, cutting it in half by lap 30 as the leaders were entering lapped traffic. By lap 36, McCowan was within two car lengths with Jackson rallying quickly in third.
The lengthy green-flag run came to an end with a lap-42 caution as fifth-running Jeff Herzog spun in turn two. That set up an eight-lap final stretch between Junghans, McCowan and Jackson with Cade Dillard fourth.
McCowan lost a ton of time on the restart, slipping to fifth, then a caution on lap 45 flew as McCowan and third-place Dillard spun between turns one and two. Junghans, Jackson and Daniel Hilsabeck were 1-2-3.
Junghans rolled a perfect restart and drove away to earn his first Lucas Oil Speedway victory, beating Jackson by 1.693 seconds with Hilsabeck third, Chris Simpson fourth after starting 15th and Ryan Gustin fifth.
“I’m glad to win it, take it back to Kansas and we’ll try it again next year,” Junghans said.
Jackson, the MLRA season championship leader from Lebanon, said his only chance was to get around Junghans on the final restart, but it was not to be.
“Chase did a good job. He executed a perfect restart with five to go,” Jackson said. “Chase is a good race-car driver and it’s not likely he’s gonna make a mistake with five to go.”
Johnny Fennewald went from eighth at the start to victory lane in the Hickamo Super Stocks, beating Derek Brown by two car lengths.
The finish:
Feature – 1. 18J-Chase Junghans[5]; 2. 56JR-Tony Jackson Jr[7]; 3. 22-Daniel Hilsabeck[9]; 4. 32S-Chris Simpson[15]; 5. 19R-Ryan Gustin[13]; 6. 25-Chad Simpson[17]; 7. 11T-Trevor Gundaker[10]; 8. 12-Scott Crigler[16]; 9. 75-Terry Phillips[3]; 10. 8M-Dillon McCowan[6]; 11. 35D-Dylan Sillman[18]; 12. 23-Joe Chalmers[21]; 13. 78S-Steve Stultz[11]; 14. (DNF) 97-Cade Dillard[1]; 15. (DNF) 11H-Jeff Herzog[4]; 16. (DNF) 8L-Matthew Larson[12]; 17. (DNF) 50C-Kayden Clatt[24]; 18. (DNF) 43-Derrick Stewart[14]; 19. (DNF) 11G-Gordy Gundaker[8]; 20. (DNF) 44-Cole Wells[2]; 21. (DNF) 1X-Aaron Marrant[23]; 22. (DNF) 82-Jace Parmley[20]; 23. (DNF) 11JK-Jon Kirby[22]; 24. (DNF) 7D-Dusty Leonard[19]
