BELLEVILLE, Kan. — Monumental, captivating, iconic or even historical.
However you want to describe it, that’s what the fans of the Belleville High Banks witnessed Saturday evening as Kyle Jones captured the seventh annual Belleville 305 Nationals presented by NextEra Energy Resources.
Koby Weirkmeister and Joey Danley were scheduled on the front row after all preliminary action was complete. On the start, Danley quickly opened his lead up to over a half a straightaway over Jeremy Huish.
Huish continued to bang the boards, keeping Danley in his sights. As the field began to separate themselves across the high-banked half-mile track, The leaders quickly began to catch traffic on lap six.
As Joey Danley began to navigate through the lap traffic, Jones started to close in on Jeremy Huish. Starting the race seventh, Jones was in hot pursuit to correct history from a year ago. Danley began to slow down after attempting to slide Michalob Voeltz.
With the tea pot starting to scream with excitement, Jones finally caught Huish on lap 16, taking the No. 9 machine to the inside of Huish, clearing him out of turn four to take the second position.
Now with over 10 laps to go, the chase was on for Kyle Jones.
Lap after lap, Jones sat in the tire tracks of Danley, waiting for the perfect opportunity to challenge. As the white flag was displayed, Jones had one more attempt.
Jones went to the top of turns one and two, building up a run to use down the back straightaway, diving to the bottom of Danley and winning a drag race to the chckered flag by 0.020 seconds.
“Man, we had a great car,” said Jones. “Joe has given me a good car now 2 years in a row, and this is really a true testament to Joe and John Webster on what they got behind this program and I’m just lucky enough to be a part of this deal.”
The finish:
Feature (30 laps): 1. 9-Kyle Jones[7]; 2. 14-Joey Danley[2]; 3. 20-Jeremy Huish[4]; 4. 2-Whit Gastineau[3]; 5. 12-Tyler Drueke[16]; 6. 20B-Kaylee Bryson[12]; 7. 31-Koby Werkmeister[1]; 8. 15V-Cole Vanderheiden[13]; 9. 07-Owen Carlson[9]; 10. 2J-Zach Blurton[15]; 11. 51-Jeremy Campbell[6]; 12. 25-Chase Brewer[8]; 13. 23-Brandon Bosma[17]; 14. 10J-Jordan Knight[10]; 15. 5-Stuart Snyder[21]; 16. 83-Carson Dillion[22]; 17. 10-Trevor Serbus[23]; 18. 81-Jon Freeman[20]; 19. 16-Conner Thomas[11]; 20. 17-Lee Goos Jr[5]; 21. 11-Chad Koch[18]; 22. 11K-Tyler Knight[14]; 23. 23V-Michalob Voeltz[19]; 24. (DNF) 0-Steven Richardson[24]