ABBOTTSTOWN, Pa. — Leading up to Saturday night’s events at Lincoln Speedway, a local reporter approached Chad Trout with a humbling statistic.
“You have one top 10 this season,” the reporter told Trout.
“Yeah, this sucks,” Trout said, perhaps referring to his dissatisfied frame of mind.
To add to the discontent, Trout and his team had to mull over everything 2020 hasn’t been for two and a half months because of the statewide shutdown due to COVID-19.
On Saturday night, though, Trout turned in a sterling effort, leading all 30 laps to win in wire-to-wire fashion at Lincoln Speedway.
“I don’t feel like I messed up any laps,” Trout said in victory lane. “My guys gave me a bad fast car tonight. We got the luck of the draw. We knew it was going to be tough. Those Rahmer boys are on it right now.”
“The break was good for me,” Trout added, alluding to the statewide shutdown. “It’s not like we were running good. It gave us time to get our [stuff] together.”
Trout timed third in the second flight of qualifying with a lap of 15.914, and because Saturday’s show operated with a Pennsylvania Speedweek format, he started on the pole for his heat. He went on to win his heat and draw the pole for the 30-lap feature, and it was smooth sailing from there.
“In time trials we sucked,” Trout said. “We just ran a good race.”
There were six restarts until the final green-flag run with nine laps to go. Trout executed flawlessly on all of them, but nearly soiled his night when Robbie Kendall got into Brian Montieth exiting the bottom of Turn 4 with the leader right behind.
Outside of that near-incident, though, Trout stayed clear of the often treacherous lapped traffic at the tight .375-mile oval.
“We knew lapped cars were going to come into play,” Trout said. “Luckily the cautions and the reds fell at the right time. That was probably the break we needed.”
Brandon Rahmer and Gerard McIntyre ran second and third, respectively, for much of the race, until the two induced the feature’s final stoppage. Restarting third, McIntyre drove hard into turn one and clipped Rahmer, who ran second and subsequently tumbled to a halt.
This moved Freddie Rahmer to second, but Trout turned in one last pristine restart to sel his first victory of 2020.
Tim Wagaman finished third from 10th. Chase Dietz and Tim Glatfelter rounded out the top five, while Steve Buckwalter finished sixth.
Lucas Wolfe raced his way to seventh from 16th. Billy Dietrich, Alan Krimes, and Tyler Bear completed the top 10.
Robert Ballou managed to finish 17th in his second race back from an arm injury sustained last summer.
Monday’s race winner Brian Montieth finished 21st.
While everything practically went Montieth’s way on Monday, when he earned that wire-to-wire victory, not a lot went right for the 2019 Lincoln Speedway champ on Saturday.
Montieth timed 12th in the second qualifying flight and finished sixth in his heat, forcing him to the consolation. He scrambled from sixth to fourth in the final two laps of the B-Main just to qualify for the feature, only to flip out of the event on Lap 20.
Saturday night marked the second race this week at Lincoln after sitting dormant for two and half months because of the statewide shutdown by the way of COVID-19.
On Monday the track broke the hiatus with a Memorial Day special featuring only 410 sprints. Even though Adams County remains in the yellow phase of Governor Tom Wolf’s plan to reopen Pennsylvania, which prohibits gatherings of more than 25 people, the speedway carried on Saturday without restriction from local law enforcement.
Todd Rittenouse Jr. won the 358 sprint car feature.
The finish:
Feature (30 Laps) – 1. 1X-Chad Trout ($4,000); 2. 51-Freddie Rahmer; 3. 5E-Tim Wagaman; 4. 75-Chase Dietz; 5. 69-Tim Glatfelter; 6. 17B-Steve Buckwalter; 7. 24-Lucas Wolfe; 8. 8-Billy Dietrich; 9. 87-Alan Krimes; 10. 25-Tyler Bear; 11. 14T-Tyler Walton; 12. 29-Dan Shetler; 13. 11-TJ Stutts; 14. 2-AJ Flick; 15. 59-Jim Siegel; 16. 67-Justin Whittall; 17. 12-Robert Ballou (DNF); 18. 07-Gerard McIntyre (DNF); 19. 0-Rick Lafferty (DNF); 20. 88-Brandon Rahmer (DNF); 21. 21-Brian Montieth (DNF); 22. 55K-Robbie Kendall (DNF); 23. 15-Adam Wilt (DNF); 24. 72-Ryan Smith (DNF)