MACON, Ill. — For decades upon decades since its 1946 construction, USAC open-wheel action at the fifth-mile Macon Speedway has been reserved solely for midget racing.
However, after a pair of back-to-back barnburners in 2023 featuring a regularity of three-wide racing and a photo finish, it’s safe to say there’s a place in the heart of central Illinois for USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car racing.
The time has come to return for Top Gun Weekend 2024 featuring reigning Macon winners Mitchel Moles and Brady Bacon, plus a number of other pilots gunning to land Friday’s $5,000 and Saturday’s $10,000 top prize on June 28-29.
Moles Carries Momentum
Moles is riding high after his recent USAC Eastern Storm championship and enters Macon on a hot streak of five consecutive top-five finishes with the series.
He’ll always be the answer to the trivia question of “Who won the first USAC National Sprint Car feature at Macon?” His victory on the opening night of Macon weekend last July came in photo-finish fashion over Carson Garrett.
Macon served as Moles’ most recent USAC victory, 37 races ago. It was a 34-race winless streak that Moles ended one year ago. He’s chasing a bit of history as well. Dating back to 2007, no driver has ever won one of the first two races on the schedule following their Eastern Storm title. Moles is primed to wipe that stat out of the record book this weekend.
Macon Bacon?
Macon’s most recent USAC sprint car winner is Brady Bacon who led the final 33 laps to become the “Top Gun” in 2023 a mere 24 hours after he and his car sat upside down up in a crumpled heap following a meeting with the turn-two wall.
Bacon bounced back the following night to become a new USAC National Sprint Car record holder in terms of the number of different states he’s won a feature in, a mark he’s now pushed to 15 after winning in mid-June at New Jersey’s Bridgeport Motorsports Park.
Bacon has also won at Macon in POWRi Midget competition, doing so in 2013. Now, Bacon aims to continue his rise over the past month of USAC Sprint Car racing which has seen him earn nine top-five results in an 11-race span.
Nose For The Bullring
Logan Seavey’s most recent visit to Macon Speedway came last August where he proceeded to lead all 30 laps en route to his first USAC National Midget victory at the track.
Seavey is vying to become the first driver to win in both a USAC National Sprint Car and a USAC National Midget at the Macon oval.
He ran fifth on the second of two nights at Macon with the sprint car in 2023, and on night one, briefly held the one-lap track record for a day following a spectacular qualifying run.
Seavey used his Macon victory as a springboard toward a USAC National Midget championship at season’s end and now he’d like to do the same with the USAC National Sprint Cars as he leads the standings by a 21-point margin.
REVOLUTION No. 9
Kyle Cummins took it right to the edge during a qualifying session in 2023 at Macon. His lap of 10.085 seconds turned out to be the quickest ever turned in USAC National Sprint Car competition, which dates back to 1956.
Getting into the 10.0 second bracket begged the question of whether a 9-second lap was within the realm of possibility. It’s certainly not out of the question to say that’s a resounding “yes!” However, achieving it will require a near perfect lap.
As it turned out, Cummins imperfect lap on the final circuit of Macon’s 2023 opening night feature provided, perhaps, the biggest thrill of the weekend as he went high side off turn four in a three-wide attempt for the win but wound up flipping the length of the straightaway after contact with the outside wall, crossing the finish line upside down, mind you, with third-place honors.
Cummins bounced back the next night with another third-place finish. This weekend, he’s vying for his first win of the USAC season and his first for the new Petty Performance Racing team. Cummins is among the few in the field who has won a feature event at Macon, taking a POWRi Midget round at the track in 2022.
First-Time Winner?
Garrett came within a whisker of achieving his first USAC feature victory at Macon in 2023 and was leading with two laps to go before coming up inches short (0.093 seconds) of Moles.
Garrett remains in the group of drivers aiming to pick off USAC National Sprint Car win No. 1 when the time comes this weekend, a list that includes the likes of Joey Amantea), Mario Clouser, Hunter Maddox, Brandon Mattox), Mitch Wissmiller, Colten Cottle and Nic Harris.
Three drivers have won their first USAC National Midget features at Macon over the years: Don Boorse (1959), Donnie Beechler (1991) and Randy Koch (1996).