ATTICA, Ohio — After crash on opening night at Attica Raceway Park a couple of weeks ago, defending track champion Cap Henry rebounded with a dominant performance to claim Saturday’s $6,000 top prize of the Core & Main Spring Nationals presented by Erie Blacktop and Smith Paving.
Henry, aboard the Jeff Ward Motorsports No. 33w, led all 30 laps of the Callie’s Performance Products 410 Sprint A-main though he was challenged early by Cale Thomas and held off a charging Emerson Axsom late for his 17th career Attica division win, placing him seventh on the all-time 410 win list at the track.
Axsom drove from ninth to a second-place finish with Greg Wilson, Trey Jacobs and Zane DeVault rounding out the top five on the challenging track that took over four inches of rain the two days prior to the event.
“I’ll be honest, it was all I had to hang onto that thing. I needed those red flags and cautions. The car was really good…I’d say I was about 50 percent,” Henry said. “I knew we had to get going and I was trying to pick my pace and maintain for a long time. Cale (Thomas) showed me his nose wing once and got by me in traffic and luckily the caution came out and we got it back. This goes to these guys over here (his crew). I tore this thing up a couple of weeks ago and they put it back together and never gave up.”
Jimmy McGrath has finished led a lot of 305 sprint features and finished second a lot. He finally got the monkey off his back Saturday at Attica, leading all 25 laps of the Fremont Fence feature to claim his first sprint car win.
Steve Rando, Brandon Moore, Tyler Shullick and John Ivy would round out the top five.
“This feels good…it doesn’t seem real. I wasn’t thinking about a lot. I just drove it as hard as I could right through the middle and hoped it stuck and stayed on all fours,” said McGrath.
The finish:
Feature (40 laps): 1. 33W-Cap Henry[1] ; 2. 27-Emerson Axsom[9] ; 3. W20-Greg Wilson[8] ; 4. 9-Trey Jacobs[4] ; 5. 4-Zane DeVault[6] ; 6. 1-Nate Dussel[3] ; 7. 5E-Bobby Elliott[7] ; 8. 22-Cole Duncan[10] ; 9. 25R-Jordan Ryan[11] ; 10. 49X-Tim Shaffer[21] ; 11. 7N-Darin Naida[16] ; 12. 29-Zeth Sabo[17] ; 13. 11N-Kasey Jedrzejek[22] ; 14. 35-Stuart Brubaker[12] ; 15. 16-DJ Foos[24] ; 16. 15K-Creed Kemenah[13] ; 17. 2-Ricky Peterson[15] ; 18. 78-Justin Clark[14] ; 19. 14R-Sean Rayhall[20] ; 20. 101-Kalib Henry[23] ; 21. 23-Cale Thomas[2] ; 22. 32-Bryce Lucius[5] ; 23. 21K-Larry Kingseed Jr[19] ; 24. 5T-Travis Philo[18]