PERRIS, Calif. — Aaron Reutzel concluded the California swing for the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series with a dominant performance Saturday night at Perris Auto Speedway.
Reutzel set fast time, won his heat, won the dash and led all 30 laps to win the SoCal Showdown for his second career WoO victory.
“Unbelievable,” the Clute, Texas native said, having to pause afterward, as if to try and grasp the dominance himself.
Coming into the Perris race, Reutzel had a top five and two top-10 finishes in the California swing and sat seventh in points. But to Reutzel, he was having a terrible year and it was time for a change.
He and his Baughman-Reutzel Motorsports team made one the morning of the race. It worked.
“We just went back to everything we were doing last year,” Reutzel said. “We just made one little change and it made the difference.”
That little change; ditching a newly built car to put an old car back together.
“There’s nothing different between them,” Reutzel said. “Sometimes you just get a car that doesn’t work, and that might have been one that doesn’t work. Everything else exactly them same. It just worked out for us.”
With the car he’s been running, Reutzel said it felt like he and his team were always playing catch up when it came to the Feature and could never qualify well anymore.
“That’s something you can’t do with these (World of Outlaws) guys,” Reutzel said.
Now, his confidence is back. It showed on track, holding off two California natives who grew up racing on the California swing tracks — rookie Carson Macedo and Rico Abreu.
Macedo presented himself as a possible threat to Reutzel, inching in on him lap after lap. After an early red flag for a flip involving Brent Marks, Reutzel had his biggest challenge yet with Macedo starting next to him and Abreu behind them.
But when the green flag waved, Macedo and Abreu were left trading slide jobs to determine who would finish second while Reutzel sailed away. It was the same story with on another restart a couple of laps later.
“I felt like I had a couple of runs at him on a couple of restarts, and it just seemed like… It’s just the way it went,” said Macedo, who finished second. “Aaron did a good job all night. I felt like we had a good race car. I felt like we had a good package all night.”
Macedo has had one of the best California swings out of all full-time World of Outlaws drivers, having finished in the top-10 in all five races and got his first win of the season at Silver Dollar Speedway.
“We’re having a lot of fun right now,” Macedo said. “We’re putting good runs up on the board and that’s what it’s all about with the Outlaws.”
In line with Macedo and Madsen, Reutzel is the eighth different winner in nine races this season.
“Whether you have 100 (wins) or you’re Donny Schatz getting another one or me getting my second one, just winning an Outlaw race is huge in general,” Reutzel said. “It feels really good to get it.”
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