While Thorson – who will try to race his way into the Chili Bowl feature from a B Main – shifted away from his coil setup for Saturday night’s action, California’s Thomas Meseraull will stick with coils in an attempt to win his first Chili Bowl.
Often a contrarian, Meseraull is driving the No. 7x for Dave Estep’s RMS Racing team, and he’s the lone heavy hitter left among those locked into the feature who plans to roll out with coils for the finale.
Meseraull believes there’s “a potential gold mine” if the track conditions for the A Main play to the liking of his coil setup.
“The first thing people should realize is that 99 percent of the cars are on torsion bar rear (suspensions), and with open wheel racing, it’s kind of monkey see monkey do,” Meseraull said. “That’s what wins, so that’s what everybody has. We started running the coils recently and it seems like it’s better than a bar car in certain conditions. We could put bars in the car here if we feel like that’s what’s going to benefit us for the feature.
“I look at this as there’s two ways to skin a cat, and we’re just gambling here to try and go win races,” Meseraull added. “If the track kind of comes to us, I think we’ll have something. Sometimes that’s the best way to win races, is to just let the track come to you. We’re gambling with it now, but so far it’s paid off.”
So, will a coil-bound car be able to beat a torsion bar rear car to win the 35th Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals? If it’s going to happen this year, Meseraull will have to be the car that gets the job done.
As far as future years, however, Thorson believes that there’s a learning curve that will have to happen if anyone – whether it’s him, Meseraull or someone else – is going to take a coil setup to victory lane at Tulsa Expo Raceway.
“I mean, anything’s possible, but it’s a matter of finding it,” Thorson said. “The problem with trying it here is that you just don’t have time to sit here and find it. You don’t have multiple races a year or multiple practice sessions to figure out what the car needs on coils. People want to try them and they get lucky, you know, strike some beginner’s luck every once in a while, but you have to know what to do to them and there’s no time to mess around here.
“Chili Bowl is a place where some people come here to test, but that isn’t what I’m here to do,” Thorson continued. “If you look at Keith (Kunz Motorsports), I’d imagine Keith is probably on the same setup he was on when I ran here for him. His cars were obviously really good then, and there’s a trend there. I just went back to what I know and what I do and what got me my prelim win last year … and it drove me from almost dead last in the C Main to fourth in the A Main.
“We’ll see what happens in my B and the A and see what setup comes out on top.”
Coverage of the C Mains, B Mains and A Main of the 35th annual Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals can be viewed live starting at 7:30 p.m. CT on MAVTV and the MAVTV Facebook page.
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