WHEATLAND, Mo. — Riley Kreisel led all 25 laps of the POWRi WAR Sprints portion of the Hockett-McMillin Memorial Friday 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 when Thorson was 14. Hockett’s cousin and crew chief, Daniel McMillin, was killed in an automobile accident in 2006.
Riley Kreisel, from Jesse Hockett’s hometown of Warsaw, led all 25 laps and held off Justin Zimmerman over the final laps to pick up the $2,000 WAR Sprint win.
It was his second win of the season and a strong bounce back from a 19th-place finish the night before when Kreisel battled issues with the car.
“We started with a really, really good race car,” Kreisel said. “The place is kind of uncharacteristic to normal and we got tighter and tighter as we went. That’s a good thing. Normally we’re fighting to get tight enough at the end. So the changes we made from last night to tonight have made really big improvement.”
Kreisel started on the pole and staved off Justin Zimmerman in the early going with Thursday winner Rylan Gray a close third. Kreisel had a one-second lead at the 10-lap mark with Gray a half-second in back of Zimmerman.
By lap 15, the leaders caught lapped traffic. Zimmerman was able to close within a car length, just before the race’s first caution slowed the action on lap 16.
Kreisel had a solid restart, but soon had Zimmerman, Gray and Jack Wagner in pursuit. Kreisel was able to hang on and beat Zimmerman by .732 seconds with Gray third, Mario Clouser fourth and Wagner fifth.
Kreisel, 26, said “it’s a blast to drive this race car right now” and said “mind-set” is the key word for Saturday night, which pays $5,077 to win. “We just have to come into tomorrow like nothing happened and be a little bit better.”
Zimmerman, a 42-year-old from Athens, Texas, has raced sparingly this season. He’s thrilled with the weekend he’s had so far with finishes of fourth and second.
“That was fun. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time,” Zimmerman said. “I think we have the car digging now so now we can see if I can go one spot more tomorrow.”
The finish:
Feature – 1. 91-Riley Kreisel[1]; 2. 1Z-Justin Zimmerman[2]; 3. 1-Rylan Gray[4]; 4. 6-Mario Clouser[3]; 5. 77-Jack Wagner[7]; 6. 11W-Wyatt Burks[5]; 7. 41-Ricky Lewis[8]; 8. 44-Wesley Smith[10]; 9. 79F-Cooper Sullivan[21]; 10. 97-Cam Schafer[11]; 11. 34-RJ Miller[6]; 12. 13-Chase Howard[19]; 13. 33-Bryson Smith[14]; 14. 76-Edison Aldrich[13]; 15. 2-Luke Howard[16]; 16. 00-Nathan Schank[9]; 17. 11-James Lyerla[15]; 18. 24LCR-Brett Combs[22]; 19. 6K-Jake Kouba[20]; 20. 73-Samuel Wagner[17]; 21. 98P-Ryan Padgett[12]; 22. 11X-Tom Curran[18]
