KNOXVILLE, Iowa — Ryan Timms passed Austin McCarl in lapped traffic to pick up his second Leighton State Bank 410 sprint car victory of the season Saturday night at Knoxville Raceway.
The 25-lap Leighton State Bank 410 feature began with Austin McCarl out in front of Chris Martin, Ryan Timms, Jusitn Henderson and Sam Hafertepe Jr.
On lap 5, Timms toook second from Martin low in turn one. A lap later, Sawyer Phillips tipped over in turn three. He was OK, but done. At the same time, a header fire burned the rear tires of a seventh running Kelby Watt. He replaced them as well as a shock in the work area.
McCarl led Timms, Martin, Henderson and Hafertepe back to green. Hafertepe used the opportunity to shoot into the top three. On lap eighth, JJ Hickle moved into the top five after starting in the fifth row.
McCarl was back in traffic on lap 12. Hickle shot by Martin for fourth on lap 16. Timms gained slowly on McCarl, but the leader was maneuvering well through traffic. On lap 24, that changed, when he was slowed behind a lapper. Timms had the preferred low line and squeezed under the lapped car into a lead he would not relinquish. On the same lap, Brady Bacon completed a run from row six to go from fifth to third.
Hickle and Martin trailed the lead trio at the line.
“It sucks,” said Timms of Austin’s plight. “I know what it’s like to be out front and have lapped cars in front of you in the preferred lane and not know where to go. I saw Austin struggling with lapped cars there. He got going on the top with the lapped cars and kind of stalled out. For whatever reason, I had a lane on the bottom a couple of times. I maybe could have made up ground on him, but for whatever reason, I decided to go through the middle.
“That was working for me getting through lapped cars, and I didn’t want to switch that up. Being the hunter, it’s less pressure knowing you can capitalize on what’s ahead of you. This is such a fast race car. We had a tough weekend last week, so it’s good to get two wins here to start the week. It was a great job by Austin. He ran a good race and made very few mistakes. We were fortunate to get that one, but we had a great race car.”
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 10, Ryan Timms (3); 2. 88, Austin McCarl (2); 3. 21H, Brady Bacon (11); 4. 2M, JJ Hickle (9); 5. 44, Chris Martin (1); 6. 15H, Sam Hafertepe Jr (6); 7. 11, Justin Henderson (4); 8. 27, Carson McCarl (5); 9. 22, Riley Goodno (7); 10. 2K, Lynton Jeffrey (17); 11. 24, Terry McCarl (8); 12. 19, Kaleb Johnson (18); 13. 21, Brian Brown (12); 14. 9JR, Derek Hagar (24); 15. 1K, Kelby Watt (16); 16. 12X, Landon Crawley (22); 17. 1TAZ, Tasker Phillips (23); 18. 45X, Rees Moran (13); 19. 3G, Ayrton Gennetten (21); 20. 2KS, Jack Anderson (20); 21. 4W, Jamie Ball (15); 22. 121, RJ Johnson (19); 23. 3P, Sawyer Phillips (14); 24. 28, Jace Park (10).
