SELINSGROVE, Pa. — For the fourth year in a row, Missouri sprint car driver Brian Brown is in central Pennsylvania to try his hand at the plethora of marquee races in September and October.
Usually, he’s riding high on accolades at this point in the season, but with the Tuscarora 50 looming at the end of the week at Port Royal Speedway, Brown is still searching for more.
“I probably have less confidence going [into the Tuscarora 50] this year than I probably have [in the past],” Brown said. “But you’re one race away from having a lot of confidence.”
Brown delivered those words prior to Sunday’s Jim Nace Memorial National Open qualifier at Selinsgrove Speedway. He left the night with a third-place finish after starting 10th in a race that ran non-stop for 30 laps.
More importantly, he tidied up shop with a smile on his face, a kind of energy that hasn’t been there recently.
“You obviously can’t win every night, but I want to feel competitive,” Brown said. “There’s nights this year that we just haven’t felt competitive. Nights like tonight make it a lot better.”
Brown’s happy he wrapped up another title at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway, but he’s also lacking security with the balance of his race car.
While this season has been irregular due to COVID-19, Brown has won only three 410 sprint car features. Without going into specifics, Brown is fighting a car that’s often too tight by the end of the night, while other times he struggles during qualifying.
“It’s been tough,” Brown said. “We’re trying a lot of stuff.”
On Friday at Williams Grove Speedway, his first race back in central Pennsylvania, Brown timed sixth overall with a lap of 16.789 and .220 seconds off Freddie Rahmer’s quick time.
In his heat, he overdrove the first turn as the polesitter and never recovered to finish fourth. He started 12th in the 25-lap feature and finished seventh.
On Saturday at Port Royal, Brown raced from 12th to eighth in the 25-lap feature. And on Sunday at Selinsgrove, he showed race-winning speed, going quickest in hot laps and powering from 10th to third.
In the concluding laps, Brown erased a four-second deficit and entered the race for the lead moments before the checkered flag.
Eventual winner Anthony Macri and runner-up Brock Zearfoss had moved down to the bottom in turns three and four, stifling Brown’s late-race charge, but also providing him something to take solace in.
“I felt like if they didn’t change their line in three and four, we could have won,” Brown said.
A win for Brown in these upcoming weeks would be his first in central Pennsylvania since 2017. He won two races that year in Posse territory, one at Selinsgrove and another at Bedford Speedway.
He’s yet to win at Williams Grove, Lincoln Speedway and Port Royal, and he knows in order to do that, it starts from the onset in time trials.
“Normally, we have a good qualifying car,” Brown said. “We’ve been buried this year. We haven’t qualified very well. By feature time we are tight. Tight all the time. Clean air fixes your car and a lot of problems. If not, it makes it tough to pass.
“We’ll keep plugging away and see what happens.”