MATTOON, Ill. — Steven Snyder Jr. would dominate in leading all 25 laps of the feature event to earn checkers in Eibach Racing Preliminary Night One of the sixth yearly installment of the Keith Kunz Motorsports Challenge presented by Start2Finish TV to claim his 11th career victory with the POWRi Non-Wing Outlaw Micro League at Coles County Speedway.
Going through a strong split-field of twenty-nine entries on prelim night one of the POWRi Non-Wing Outlaw Micro division in the KKM Challenge would find Cullen Hutchison set the quick qualifying time with a time of 10.689 seconds. Jeffrey Newell, Snyder, Darren Brown and Brant Woods would each emerge victorious in heat racing action with Steven Snyder Jr, Frank Flud and Brecken Reese all earning wins in qualifier competitions as Braxton Weger would gain the semi-feature win.
Flying onto the smooth Coles County feature racing would see the high point qualifier Snyder battle outside front-row contender Newell as the green flew with Snyder holding the front of the field as Newell, Flud, Chelby Hinton and Reese all kept close inside the early contending top five.
Pulling away from the field in the opening six laps, Snyder would separate by nearly a two-second margin from second-running Newell as lap traffic began to come into play.
Restarting under Honest Abe’s Choose-Cone conditions, low-line re-firing Snyder would get an outstanding jump on the field to retain the lead with Jeffrey Newell and Chelby Hinton sliding each other on opposite sides of the track for the runner-up positioning as laps began to tick away rapidly.
Separating from the field by over a three-and-a-half second margin, Snyder would take a commanding lead into the mid-point of the feature as all eyes were on the battle for the second spot as Hinton, Flud and Newell all attempted to run in the same line as caution would wave with Newell the odd-man out and facing the wrong way on the track.
Bringing the field back to green on lap 16, Snyder would again restart with winning intent and run away from the field only to witness a late race caution bunch the field back together for theatrics to end the evening with two laps remaining.
Flying back out front on the single-file restart, Snyder would hold steady up front for his sixth yearly POWRi Non-Wing Outlaw Micro victory by a one-and-a-half second margin of victory in preliminary night action.
“It’s our first time here and all those practice sessions last night paid off, the track came into our liking, and we tried something else from what we normally run and this car was bad fast,” said Snyder. “Lap traffic never really came into play with the cautions coming out at the right time so we’ll see what we have in store for Saturday Night”.
Hinton would finish in the heavily contested second spot with Flud completing the podium placements and Reese earning the final lock-in positioning in fourth as well as Brown rounding out the top-five finishers.
Feature Finish (25 Laps)
1. 21S-Steven Snyder Jr[1]; 2. 28-Chelby Hinton[3]; 3. 81-Frank Flud[4]; 4. 12J-Brecken Reese[6]; 5. 11C-Darren Brown[7]; 6. 24S-Colby Sokol[13]; 7. 41-Colton Hardy[16]; 8. 28P-Gunnar Pio[12]; 9. 3-Drew Sherman[10]; 10. 12C-Chase Spicola[20]; 11. 61-Cole Tinsley[19]; 12. 32-Trey Marcham[15]; 13. 75-Blayne Buntin[14]; 14. 31BW-Braxton Weger[17]; 15. 71-Jeffrey Newell[2]; 16. 83W-Brant Woods[11]; 17. 94C-Jordan Clary[5]; 18. 4J-Jaylon Mills[18]; 19. 14B-Brody Bridgeman[22]; 20. 83-Cullen Hutchison[8]; 21. 10-Daniel Robinson[9]; 22. 40-Devin Feger[21].