TULSA, Okla. — Seth Bergman admittedly wasn’t satisfied with his third-place result in the Dirt Down in T-Town makeup race early in the program at Tulsa Speedway.
He took out his frustration on the rest of the field in the second main event of the night, winning his seventh American Sprint Car Series National Tour Feature of the year in commanding fashion.
“Obviously you could tell the disappointment on my face after the first one,” Bergman said. “We’ve got a lot of people here, a lot of people that support this race car and expect to win races. When we don’t, it’s frustrating. When you’re in a tight championship battle and the guy that you’re racing is winning the races and you’re watching him drive away, it’s frustrating.”
Bergman’s strong qualifying effort secured him a spot in the dash, and after making some adjustments to the No. 23 machine to improve from the makeup race prior to running that dash, he quickly became the favorite come feature time.
“We rolled out for that dash, we made some wholesale changes and the thing came to life,” Bergman said. “Had a big grin on my face after that, knew we had a shot to win this deal.”
The changes paid off, as Bergman won the five-lap sprint to secure the feature pole. He put it to good use, jumping out to a two-car-length lead over second-place starter Andrew Deal by the time they made it to the backstretch on Lap 1.
His advantage was quickly wiped away when chaos erupted in Turn 1 a lap later, as Blake Hahn and Dale Howard both got upside down and collected several other cars. One of them was makeup Feature winner Sam Hafertepe Jr., who went to the work area to repair some front-end damage.
When the green flag flew again, Bergman got an even better launch than on the original start and quickly escaped to a half-straightaway lead. Behind him, a rough first lap for Deal allowed Brady Baker to sneak into second, but Emilio Hoover’s spin in Turn 3 brought the caution out before he could go to work on catching Bergman.
The ensuing restart gave Deal a chance to get around Baker and back into second, but instead Matt Covington got by on the low side and sent Deal back to fourth. What followed turned out to be the longest green flag run of the race, and Bergman made the most of it by driving off to a two-second lead.
Just past halfway, Covington capitalized on a bobble in Turn 4 by Baker to briefly get beside him, but Baker was able to recover and hold the No. 95 off. The top three went unchanged until Riley Goodno spun in Turn 4, forcing another restart with six laps to go.
After racing side-by-side with Baker following the restart, Covington made the move stick on the outside and grabbed the runner-up spot. He was unable to mount a charge on Bergman though, as the Series points leader stayed out front for the remaining laps to lead green-to-checkered in the 25-lap race.
“Just a lot of unknowns,” Bergman said. “For me, I don’t want to go be stupid and throw it away, so I was just plugging away. I thought I could hear somebody toward the end. I figured if I just kind of snuck through the middle or the bottom there and didn’t get too upset, we would be alright, and it ended up working out.”
Hafertepe drove from the back of the pack after his early misfortune up to fourth to minimize the damage in the standings, but nevertheless, Bergman has an advantage of 161 points with two races remaining.
“I think I can start breathing a little bit again,” Bergman said. “My thing was to get through these first two nights and hopefully not lose any points to [Hafertepe], and I think we gained a little bit. So that’s great.”
Covington’s runner-up effort was his first podium finish since Aug. 31 at Electric City Speedway, giving him some momentum entering the season finale at his home track, Creek County Speedway.
“It seemed like the car was good and we had a good handle on it all night long,” Covington said. “Ran two Features in one night, and we’re going to take that on to Kellyville tomorrow and see if that doesn’t translate to another podium.”
Brady Baker has been a thorn in the side of the full-timers on tour all season, and Thursday night at Tulsa was no different with his third-place finish.
“Awesome race there,” Baker said. “It was me, Bergman and Andrew Deal off that start, that was a pretty fun little five laps. Track got pretty rough, and then we hit the rut right down there, lost a spot or two and then we hustled back. Me and Matt had a good race.”
Hank Davis rebounded from a crash in the first feature of the night by driving from 15th to fifth.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 23-Seth Bergman[1]; 2. 95-Matt Covington[6]; 3. 71-Brady Baker[3]; 4. 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr[4]; 5. 2C-Hank Davis[15]; 6. 15D-Andrew Deal[2]; 7. 1TAZ-Tasker Phillips[14]; 8. 10-Landon Britt[17]; 9. 36-Jason Martin[7]; 10. 1-Sean McClelland[11]; 11. 14E-Kyle Bellm[13]; 12. 9-Emilio Hoover[19]; 13. 20-Noah Harris[16]; 14. 88-Terry Easum[20]; 15. 2J-Zach Blurton[23]; 16. 938-Bradley Fezard[12]; 17. 22-Riley Goodno[9]; 18. 16G-Austyn Gossel[18]; 19. 45X-Kyler Johnson[8]; 20. 17B-Ryan Bickett[21]; 21. 8-Alex Sewell[22]; 22. 47-Dale Howard[10]; 23. 52-Blake Hahn[5]