WHEATLAND, Mo. — Chase Howard roared to the lead after a restart on lap 14 and rolled to his second POWRi WAR non-winged sprint car victory Friday night at Lucas Oil Speedway.
The event was part of night two of the Jesse Hockett-Daniel McMillin Memorial.
Howard, a 20-year-old from Nesbit, Miss., scored his sixth overall victory of the season and second in the POWRi WAR Sprints. He earned $2,000 for the victory and set himself up for a prime starting spot for Saturday’s feature.
“I didn’t think I was gonna catch Kobe for a minute, but he chose the outside and the bottom came in,” Howard said of the key restart. “I just got lucky, because I sure don’t have the motor to be competing on this track.”
It didn’t take long for Howard, who started 10th, to make his way into contention in a race that was filled with cautions the first half of the way.
Xavier Doney got the good start from his outside front-row starting spot and took the early lead, a half-second in front of Simpson when the caution flew on lap five. Simpson used the restart to shoot to the lead on lap six with Howard second and Doney shuffled to third before another caution waved.
After they rolled to green again, Simpson had a .603-second advantage over Howard when the event’s third caution came out on lap 10. Simpson again opted to restart on the outside, which had been the fast line for him, but the start was negated with a red flag for a five-car accident on the backstretch.
Simpson opened a race-high one-second lead by lap 13 when another red came out as Keith Martin’s car took a wild tumble between turns one and two. He emerged from the damaged car unhurt.
This time on the restart, Howard got a great jump and squeezed past Simpson on the inside out of turn four to grab the lead on lap 14.
“He was running a really good line the entire time,” Howard said. “If he had picked the bottom, he could have probably blocked it. But that’s how the choose cone works.”
Howard was able to extend his lead to 1.2 seconds by lap 20 as the race finally settled into a rhythm after the five previous stoppages. Howard drove away to beat Simpson by 1.9 seconds at the finish.
“He kind of outsmarted and all-around got me on that last restart,” Simpson said. “But all-around it was a good night. I could have done a few things better throughout the race, but I’ll take this down as a good run.”
Doney settled for third with Shawn Westerfield fourth and Mario Clouser finishing fifth.
Jake Bubak won the winged sprint car feature.
The finish:
Feature (20 laps): 1. 13-Chase Howard[10]; 2. 21K-Kobe Simpson[1]; 3. 74-Xavier Doney[2]; 4. 4J-Shawn Westerfeld[3]; 5. 6-Mario Clouser[7]; 6. 21-Caleb Stelzig[22]; 7. 73-Samuel Wagner[5]; 8. 16-Anthony Nicholson[13]; 9. 11WX-Chris Morgan[17]; 10. 24-Casey Shuman[14]; 11. 5-Jesse Vermillion[4]; 12. 15-Matt Sherrell[6]; 13. 79-Keith Martin[12]; 14. 2H-Luke Howard[15]; 15. 26-Zachary Clark[21]; 16. 57-Chase Parson[19]; 17. 6X-Frank Rodgers[20]; 18. 27-Justin Johnson[18]; 19. 15EX-Jason Earls[9]; 20. 33W-Rece Wommack[11]; 21. 33-Bryson Smith[8]; 22. (DNS) 15B-Quinton Benson