TEXARKANA, Ark. — Brady Bacon had multiple duels to face off against during the final laps of Saturday night’s Wingless Short Track Nationals at Texarkana 67 Speedway.
First, there was Kyle Cummins who controlled much of the second half of the 40-lap event and was leading Bacon when the white flag was displayed. Then there was the lapped traffic, which seemingly encompassed every spec of dirt across the entire width of the quarter-mile dirt oval.
Through it all, Bacon emerged as the $10,000 victor to become the first driver to win multiple USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship feature events in The Natural State of Arkansas.
Back in 2012, Bacon scored what was his first career victory for the Hoffman team, which he now owns 50 of, down the road at Riverside International Speedway in West Memphis, Ark., truly a full circle event for the Broken Arrow, Okla. native. In fact, the 50 wins for Bacon as the driver of the Hoffman / Dynamics, Inc No. 69 is the most between any driver/entrant pairing in USAC National Sprint Car history.
In a race which featured six lead changes, including five during the final seven laps, Bacon took over the lead when Cummins biked on the turn two cushion, dug in and flipped upside multiple times. Upon the resumption, Bacon led the final two laps following a green-white-checker restart to earn the 58th overall victory of his USAC National Sprint Car career, four shy of Dave Darland’s all-time series record of 62.
“I knew traffic was going to be hard and I knew we were tight,” Bacon explained. “So, I was just hanging on for the first 15 laps or so. I knew the track would come to us, but it was going to be hard to pass, and it came down to the wire there.”
Kevin Thomas Jr. led the opening 18 laps from his outside front row starting position while pole sitter Cummins slotted into the second position. Just before the midway point, the duel between the pair was on. First, Cummins swept around the outside of Thomas briefly in turn three on lap 17. However, Cummins became boxed in behind a lapped car. Thomas promptly drove back under to reclaim the top spot.
However, Thomas’ lead proved to be short lived following that encounter. On lap 19, Cummins shot around the outside of Thomas off the exit of turn four to take over up front.
As Cummins worked through traffic to extend his lead on lap 25, he split between the cars of Anthony Nicholson and Justin Zimmerman to put them a lap down. It was a close call off turn four for Cummins who touched wheels with Zimmerman, but both continued on without interruption, harm or foul.
Meanwhile, Bacon, who had run third throughout much of the contest, slipped under Thomas for the runner-up spot in turns three and four on lap 28. However, Bacon remained 1.7 seconds behind Cummins who was steadily running away and hiding from all challengers.
If traffic did not exist, commutes from point A to point B would be so much smoother and simpler. But that’s not real life on the mean streets, nor is it on the racetrack, and Cummins soon reinforced that sad truth of life. As Cummins spied high and low to find a gap to escape through on his merry way, those gaps became smaller until they became non-existent.
During that time, Bacon was shaving off multiple tenths a lap, and by lap 35, he was in a position to pounce. Bacon scoured the bottom of turns one and two to scoot by Cummins for the top spot. In the meantime, Thomas re-entered the fray and slid across the nose of Cummins in turn three to briefly occupy second for a moment.
Undeterred, Cummins cut back under Bacon to retain the position at the stripe, and less than a full circuit later, on lap 37, Bacon found himself trapped behind Kale Drake on the bottom, which subsequently parted the seas for Cummins who cruised the high side back to the lead with just three laps remaining.
With the tail-end lead lap cars of Chase Howard, Kale Drake and Kyle Jones stacked three-wide from top-to-bottom, that left minimal wiggle room for Cummins to finish his work. Gliding through the middle of turns one and two, Cummins was in no man’s land as Bacon once again motored by on the low side to retake the lead with two laps remaining. Bacon encountered the same precarious position on lap 39 as he got bogged behind the same three-wide formation, while Cummins had free reign up top to blast past Bacon one more on the back straight, ultimately clearing him for the spot off turn four with the white flag in sight.
Traveling side-by-side into turn one, with Bacon low and Cummins high, fate was decided when Cummins smashed the curb, got his left side wheels airborne before landing back on all fours and pancaking the wall, sending Cummins flopping over twice. Cummins climbed out under his own power after the incident that turned the complexion of the race on a dime.
“That baby biked up on me; it hadn’t biked the whole race,” Cummins lamented. “We were just driving hard, and the lapped cars were hard to get around, and Brady got back around me. We were two-wide and three-wide, and it was wild up there. God, I hate it for my team. We were going to win $10,000 bucks. I’m here to race to win and I was giving it all she had. I went into that corner every lap just like that, and I thought it would come down and maybe I could save it. This one time got me a little bit.”
Cummins’ catastrophe set up a green-white-checker scenario to decide the race, pushing the total laps of the feature into a rare “overtime” period. However, just as soon as it got going, the going soon got stopped. On the lap 40 restart, Hunter Maddox, running 17th at the time, ramped over the left rear tire of R.J. Miller entering turn three, resulting in Maddox flipping wildly several times. Maddox walked away from the incident under his own power.
The second attempt at a GWC went much more smoothly for all, but especially for Bacon who launched forward with a much better restart than the time before. Without an imminent challenge, Bacon stepped away from the field with relative ease to cross the line 0.725 seconds ahead of the pack in his Dynamics, Inc./Davis Brothers Trucking – Tel-Star Communications/Triple X/Rider Chevy.
“On those green-white-checker restarts, you never know what’s going to happen, especially after we sit on the track and the tire gets cold and loses air,” Bacon demonstrated. “On the first one, I didn’t get a very good start. I saw KTJ on the bottom and I had too much time to think about what I was going to do on the next one, but obviously, we made the right choice, and we were able to stay out front and get the win. It’s good to win a little closer to home than I’m used to.”
Behind the front two of Bacon and Thomas, Logan Seavey crossed the line in third while Daison Pursley and Mitchel Moles finished fourth and fifth respectively to round out the top-five.
Kevin Thomas Jr. led the initial 18 laps of the main event, but felt he just didn’t pick the right lines at the right time to grab the win on this evening aboard his Rock Steady Racing/Inferno Armor – Eddie Gilstrap Motors – Creative Finishing/Mach-1/Stanton Chevy. Still, it was a superb night for the veteran as he finished as the runner-up.
Logan Seavey began his night by setting a new one-lap USAC National Sprint Car track record at Texarkana with a time of 13.985 seconds during Honest Abe Roofing Qualifying. The 15th fast time of his career with the series tied him for 32nd all-time alongside Kenny Irwin Jr., Sammy Sessions and Brian Tyler. In the feature, the series point leader searched the surface high, low and everywhere in between to work his way past Pursley into the third spot on the final lap in his MPV Express – CG CPAs – Indy Custom Stone/DRC/Stanton Chevy, which was his 12th top-five result in his last 14 series starts.
Kyle Jones (Kennedale, Texas) racked up several contingency awards throughout the course of the feature. He earned $500 as the ProSource Passing Master for the abbreviated weekend, going +13 combined between his heat race and the feature at Texarkana. He claimed another $100 bonus as the race’s hard charger, starting 22nd and finishing 10th. He also pocketed $200 as the top-finishing ASCS Elite Non-Wing Sprint Car Series driver.
Jason Howell put together a pretty solid night all around, finishing the feature as the 14th place finisher, which was the second highest placement by an ASCS Elite Non-Wing Sprint Car Series driver in Saturday night’s feature. For that performance, he picked up an extra $100 from ProSource.
Kyle Cummins was the show from the get-go. Although his bid for a feature win came up short in heartbreaking fashion, he was spectacular throughout. Early on, he overcame engine issues to win his heat race on the last lap. That right there proved to be the night’s Inferno Armor Fire Move of the Night.
USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship, Texarkana 67 Speedway, Texarkana, Ark., Sept. 7, 2024
HONEST ABE ROOFING QUALIFYING: 1. Logan Seavey, 57, Abacus-13.985 (New Track Record); 2. Mitchel Moles, 19AZ, Reinbold/Underwood-13.987; 3. Daison Pursley, 21AZ, Team AZ-14.158; 4. Brady Bacon, 69, Dynamics-14.170; 5. Kevin Thomas Jr., 3R, Rock Steady-14.177; 6. Kyle Cummins, 3p, Petty-14.220; 7. Justin Grant, 4, TOPP-14.335; 8. C.J. Leary, 15x, BGE Dougherty-14.340; 9. Matt Westfall, 33m, Marshall-14.484; 10. Kale Drake, 2B, 2B Racing-14.523; 11. Robert Ballou, 12, Ballou-14.559; 12. Kobe Simpson, 21K, Simpson-14.585; 13. Jason Howell, 72, Pack Rat-14.642; 14. Chase Howard, 13, Howard-14.656; 15. Hunter Maddox, 24m, Maddox-14.672; 16. Justin Zimmerman, #1, Zimmerman-14.696; 17. Keith Martin, 79, Hall-14.722; 18. Paul White, 1, Wade-14.767; 19. R.J. Miller, 34, Miller-14.856; 20. Anthony Nicholson, 16, Nicholson-14.885; 21. Kyle Jones, 79x, Hall-14.935; 22. Rhett Butler, 34R, Butler-15.587; 23. Ronny Howard, 44, Howard-15.638; 24. Brennon Marshall, 43, Miller-NT; 25. Colby Stubblefield, 2, Stubblefield-NT.
SIMPSON RACE PRODUCTS FIRST HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature) 1. Kale Drake, 2. Justin Grant, 3. Justin Zimmerman, 4. Brady Bacon, 5. Jason Howell, 6. Logan Seavey, 7. R.J. Miller, 8. Rhett Butler. 2:02.068
ROD END SUPPLY SECOND HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature) 1. Robert Ballou, 2. C.J. Leary, 3. Kevin Thomas Jr., 4. Mitchel Moles, 5. Keith Martin, 6. Chase Howard, 7. Anthony Nicholson, 8. Ronny Howard. 2:00.129 (New Track Record)
T.J. FORGED / CAR IQ THIRD HEAT: (8 laps, all transfer to the feature) 1. Kyle Cummins, 2. Matt Westfall, 3. Hunter Maddox, 4. Kobe Simpson, 5. Daison Pursley, 6. Kyle Jones, 7. Paul White. 2:03.372
FEATURE: (41 laps, starting positions in parentheses) 1. Brady Bacon (3), 2. Kevin Thomas Jr. (2), 3. Logan Seavey (6), 4. Daison Pursley (4), 5. Mitchel Moles (5), 6. C.J. Leary (10), 7. Robert Ballou (8), 8. Justin Grant (9), 9. Matt Westfall (11), 10. Kyle Jones (22), 11. Kale Drake (7), 12. Kobe Simpson (12), 13. Anthony Nicholson (19), 14. Jason Howell (13), 15. R.J. Miller (18), 16. Kyle Cummins (1), 17. Paul White (21), 18. Hunter Maddox (14), 19. Chase Howard (17), 20. Rhett Butler (20), 21. Justin Zimmerman (15), 22. Keith Martin (16), 23. Ronny Howard (23). NT