WHEATLAND, Mo. — Riley Kreisel inherited the lead on lap 20 and survived five cautions and a red flag the rest of the way as other contenders fell by the wayside.
He ultimately held off Nixa’s Wesley Smith to earn the POWRi WAR feature win during Saturday’s Hockett-McMillen Memorial finale at Lucas Oil Speedway.
The Hockett-McMillin Memorial pays tribute to the legacy of Hockett, from Warsaw, who was a national star in both the winged and non-wing sprint divisions when he lost his life in a shop accident in 2010. Hockett’s cousin and crew chief, Daniel McMillin, was killed in an automobile accident in 2006.
Kreisel prevailed by 1.7 seconds and took home $5,077 with his 15th career WAR victory. The three-time series champion, from the same hometown as Hockett, said it’s been a long-time goal to win this race and take the trophy back to Hockett’s hometown.
“I hate that, because I want to beat those guys to say I did it,” Kreisel said of attrition that eliminated several contenders in the second half of the 30-lapper. “But this is so many years of just heartbreak here. Some years we didn’t even have speed. Just to have speed here … I’m speechless. This is huge.”
Pole-starting Rylan Gray set the early pace over third-starting Jack Wagner with Kreisel needing only three laps to move from sixth to third.
Gray and Wagner were side by side by lap 11 and Wagner slid around Gray for the lead on lap 12. Wagner quickly expanded his lead to 1.8 seconds at the halfway mark on lap 15 with Kreisel third and Ricky Lewis fourth.
The leaders sliced through traffic before the first caution flew on lap 18 as Lewis shredded a tire and came to a stop, wiping out Wagner’s 1.2-second lead on Gray.
The restart saw Gray, Thursday’s prelim feature winner, enter too hot into turn one, jumping the cushion and hitting the wall. Meanwhile, Wagner headed to the pits under caution and returned to the rear of the field.
Issues by Gray and Wagner put Kreisel to the lead with 12 laps remaining. But mayhem continued on the next attempt at a restart as top-10 running Justin Zimmerman, Mario Clouser, Bryson Smith and Cooper Sullivan were involved in a turn-four tangle.
Just three laps were completed before another caution for debris on the front stretch. That erased Kreisel’s 2.5-second lead over Wesley Smith with nine to go.
Kreisel had a two-second lead when caution again flew on lap 27 for a Brett Combs spin in turn two. That left a three-lap shootout for the win with Smith, Wyatt Burks, Tom Curran and a rallying Wagner were in the top five.
One lap was completed before the fourth-running Jack Wagner took the wildest ride of the night, flipping his car in turn three. Wagner climbed from the car and was OK, waving to the fans.
Kreisel drove away over the final two laps, nearly two seconds in front of Smith. Burks was third with Curran fourth and Zimmerman fifth.
“There were so many years and I thought we would never win this deal,” Kreisel said. “We never gave up, that’s for sure. We always left here thinking ‘what do we need to do?’ We made like two changes to our entire program and it just lit the light for us.”
Smith’s runner-up finish nailed down the wingless season championship, something of a consolation prize for the former winner of the event.
“It’s been a tough week for us. We’ve been plugging away,” Smith said. “We were just a little too stiff on corner entry. The track was really fast tonight. It was so fast around the top we just needed to be a little freer getting in.
“But I’ll take a second due to attrition there. The top 10 car are capable of winning here. We’ve all been the same speed all week and Riley either found another gear or we dropped anchor a little bit.”
The finish:
Feature – 1. 91-Riley Kreisel[6]; 2. 44-Wesley Smith[7]; 3. 11W-Wyatt Burks[5]; 4. 11X-Tom Curran[14]; 5. 1Z-Justin Zimmerman[2]; 6. 33-Bryson Smith[11]; 7. 2-Luke Howard[22]; 8. 98P-Ryan Padgett[16]; 9. 6K-Jake Kouba[19]; 10. 27-Justin Johnson[23]; 11. 13-Chase Howard[21]; 12. 76-Edison Aldrich[18]; 13. 00-Nathan Schank[20]; 14. 73-Samuel Wagner[13]; 15. 99-Jarrett Weyant[24]; 16. 77-Jack Wagner[3]; 17. 1-Rylan Gray[1]; 18. 97-Cam Schafer[10]; 19. 24LCR-Brett Combs[25]; 20. 00W-Noah Whitehouse[15]; 21. 41-Ricky Lewis[9]; 22. 6-Mario Clouser[4]; 23. 79F-Cooper Sullivan[17]; 24. 11-James Lyerla[12]; 25. 34-RJ Miller[8]
