KOKOMO, Ind. — Kyle Cummins raced from sixth to win Thursday night’s USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car Smackdown IX opener at Kokomo Speedway.
Cummins made his way to second in four laps and took the lead from Tyler Courtney on lap 13.
Cummins stifled the late-race challenge of Brady Bacon during a green-white-checkered finish to score the victory, his second straight with the series and the eighth of his career.
While Cummins’ well-established dominance of Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Ind., is known far and wide, Thursday’s victory marked the second of his USAC career at Kokomo, the very same venue he won his first USAC sprint car feature at in 2016.
“We’ve actually been experimenting and trying different stuff all year,” Cummins revealed. “Last year, we had a great year, but there were things we struggled at that I wanted to get better at. We just decided everywhere we’ve been going, we’ve been trying something a little different here and there. We kept our same stuff at Tri-State Speedway, but everywhere else, we’ve kind of ventured out to some different stuff. We’re slowly getting a handle on it, which is making me a lot more comfortable to drive it as hard as I can at the beginning and at the end instead of just the end.”
A stackup on the initial start, forced a second attempt to start the race with Tyler Courtney grabbing the lead and Cummins, who was the fast qualifier fighting his way forward.
From lap five onward, Cummins was all over Courtney.
On the 11th and 12th lap, Cummins found a bit of a groove that witnessed him getting a run on the bottom underneath Courtney for the position exiting turn four, ultimately coming up short in his bid by a single car length at the line each time.
On the 13th circuit, however, Cummins got the run he needed after putting together a high-quality set of turns in one and two, pulling even alongside Courtney on the back straightaway before surpassing him on the bottom of three and four to make the pass stick and overtake the top position.
As Cummins performed his high-wire act on the topside of the race track in traffic throughout the second half of the race, Courtney remained just three car lengths behind in second with only three laps remaining.
As Courtney diamonded off turn one on lap 28, he encountered the lapped cars of Damion Gardner and Tyler Thomas in turn two. With the gap between Gardner and Thomas closing rapidly, Courtney and Thomas made contact with Courtney’s left rear tire ramping over Thomas’ right front.
The result sent Courtney sideways and plowed into by the incoming Shane Cottle while second-running Bacon became airborne and bouncing off the track surface twice. Thomas, meanwhile, stopped backward with a collapsed front end.
Bacon, along with Cottle, continued onward. However, Courtney’s left rear tire was now flat, forcing him to the work area where his crew changed the tire before ultimately returning to finish 15th.
The first attempt at the resumption of racing saw fourth-running Kevin Thomas Jr. suffer heartbreak of his own on the 28th lap when he slowed on the front straightaway before stopping in turn two, setting up a green-white-checkered finish.
When racing resumed, Bacon showed his involvement in the incident did not hamper the drive of his car or himself personally as he dug in on the bottom, surging off the final set of corners to nearly pull even with Cummins.
As the two raced to the line side-by-side, with Cummins ahead by a wheel at the stripe, the two were greeted by the yellow flag instead of the checkered flag due to Bill Balog performing a 360-degree spin in turn two, which by rule, instantly brought out the yellow flag each time.
Cummins’ sight of Bacon underneath him in turn four just before the yellow was a bit of a surprise to him, as it turned out.
“It was a little nerve wracking,” Cummins said. “When I was coming through three and four, I thought I was fine. All of a sudden, here he comes up and I’m pretty sure I had him at the line if it would’ve went checkered then, but it feels better when you win and they’re not right to the side of you.”
Under the caution, Cummins made a few final adjustments both on the car and with his approach.
“I took a half turn out of both front shocks just to say I did something and give myself just a little bit extra,” Cummins said. “Then, I slowed my entry down just a little bit in both corners and was going to make him pass me on the top. I wanted to stay a little bit more in the moisture down the back stretch and just not open it up for him to drive by me.”
Cummins staved off the competition to capture the victory by 0.259 seconds over Bacon and Robert Ballou, who rounded out the podium.
Buddy Kofoid, making his USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car debut, finished fourth, while Thomas Meseraull rounded out the top five.
To see results, turn to the next page.