PETALUMA, Calif. — Three-time track champion Bradley Terrell, known as the “BT Express” for his success at Petaluma Speedway, ran away from the field in the late stages of the race to win the 30-lap Pit Stop USA feature for non-wing sprint cars Saturday night, but only after holding off a mid-race challenge by runner-up Nick Robfogel.
Starting sixth in the inverted field after setting the quickest qualifying time on the three-eighths-mile oval, Terrell wound his way through a jam-up of cars like a New York cab driver cutting traffic during the first lap and was leading the field by the start of the second lap.
Meanwhile, Robfogel jumped from fourth on the grid to Terrell’s back bumper and the pair ran off to a multi-car lead. Following a restart on lap nine, the pair repeated a dance over four laps, with Robfogel diving inside Terrell in turn three and coming off turn four nose to nose with the leader, only to see Terrell’s momentum pay off on the front straightaway and lead the pair into turn one.
A restart with eight laps remaining set the stage for a final showdown, but as the green flag fell, Robfogel was suddenly caught up in a three-way fight for the runner-up spot with Shayna Ensign and David Lindt, who had been trading the third and fourth spots back and forth all race long, which allowed Terrell to build a full straightaway lead while sweeping the high groove inches from fence.
“Things were a bit squirrelly on that first lap with all the cars jammed up in the first turn,” said Terrell. “But I knew if I was patient and hit my marks, we would be OK.”
Robfogel conceded he had only a slim chance of beating Terrell.
“I was a little bit better than Bradley….for a bit,” he said. “I feel that our cars were dead equal, but I needed to get through turns one and two better to get closer to him on the backstretch for the pass to work in three and four.
“But I’m pumped that I could hang with him,” said Robfogel enthusiastically. ‘He’s so smooth that you really have to be on top of your game to beat him.”
Lindt won the race-long duel with Ensign for third.