JOLIET, Ill. — Aaron Reutzel doesn’t know how to lose at Dirt Oval 66.
The Clute, Texas, native rolled into the Federated Auto Parts Route 66 Showdown and put his perfect record on the line. Reutzel beat the All Stars at the Illinois oval back in 2018 and 2019 and was prepared to face off with the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Cars as the Series returned for the first time since 2017.
Reutzel earned the pole for Friday’s main event and never looked back during the 25-lapper. A sketchy restart and lapped traffic created some drama, but ultimately neither were enough to derail the Ridge & Sons Racing driver. Reutzel fended off a final-lap charge from David Gravel to secure his third consecutive win in Joliet.
“This is awesome,” Reutzel said. “It’s been a long time. Just not going up and down the road like I used to you kind of lose your race craft a little bit. This feels great. I couldn’t feel more excited. My entire family is here. This is the first Outlaw win they’ve ever seen. Brian and Lisa Ridge, this is their first true Outlaw win. I just couldn’t be more happy to get it for them. They deserve it. They’ve given me everything. This one is definitely for them.”
Reutzel’s win ended a drought dating back to 2021 as he scored his first victory with The Greatest Show on Dirt in three years. It’s the seventh of Reutzel’s career, equaling him with Chad Kemenah, Brian Brown and Jeff Shepard for 57th on the all-time win list. He’s the seventh different competitor to visit Dirt Oval 66 Victory Lane with the World of Outlaws.
A win in the Toyota Racing Dash set Reutzel up on the pole for the NOS Energy Drink Feature. Second-starting Chris Windom gave him a fight on the opening circuit, but ultimately Reutzel powered ahead of the Vermeer Motorsports No. 55 to lead Lap 1.
An early caution for Windom slowing with problems set up a chaotic restart with 15 laps left. Gravel, who inherited third, got into Reutzel as the field came to restart. The collision caused a stack-up behind them and dominoed through the field until Sterling Cling and Geoff Dodge wound up upside down. Both drivers were okay.
Reutzel and Gravel both escaped with no considerable damage and prepared for the restart.
A fierce battle between Gravel and Carson Macedo was unleashed when the green lights returned. The two traded several slide jobs and crossovers before Gravel finally secured the runner-up spot.
A few more yellow flags continued to keep the leaders out of traffic, and one final one with seven laps remaining looked like it might seal the deal for Reutzel. But he wasn’t safe quite yet.
As the laps faded, he got closer and closer to the tail of the field, and Gravel managed to pace him aboard the Big Game Motorsports No. 2. With only two circuits remaining, Reutzel found himself in traffic.
The white flag waved, and Gravel erased most of the gap between the two as they navigated Turns 1 and 2. Reutzel looked to dive under a lapped car in the final set of corners, but the car ahead also went low. Reutzel quickly adjusted and aimed back toward the top and slid in front of Gravel. As Reutzel caught the cushion Gravel turned underneath him but didn’t quite have the power needed to drive by. Reutzel used the momentum of the top to finish off his first World of Outlaws win in 1,176 days.
“I just had a lapped car make an erratic lane change,” Reutzel said of the final lap. “I knew I needed to do something, so I hurried up and went back to the top, and I just slid into it too hard. I’m glad we came out on top of that. That would’ve really sucked to lose it that way.”
Gravel had to settle for second, his 10th World of Outlaws runner-up of the season. While he was hungry for his 15th Series triumph of 2024, Gravel came away satisfied with a strong points night as he looks to close out his first championship.
“I thought we were a little bit better than Aaron there at the end,” Gravel said. “He really had to lean on the cushion, I thought. I felt like he was coming back to us a little bit, and obviously lapped traffic was coming there. He got over the cushion that one time. That lapped car looked like he was going high and then went low, and Aaron was going low then he went high. I was committed to the top at that point, so I couldn’t really do much from there. It was superior grip on the top of (Turns) 3 and 4. Man, it was close.”
Rounding out the podium was Carson Macedo and the Jason Johnson Racing crew.
“He (Gravel) was able to slide me with a big run into Turn 1,” Macedo explained. “And, man, once somebody gets by you, the top has a lot of speed once you get up there leaning on it. It was going to be tough to get back by him. Seems like we really needed traffic to kind of mix things up. When we got there, it was one of those deals where a red or a yellow would come out.”
Logan Schuchart and Sheldon Haudenschild completed the top five.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 87-Aaron Reutzel[1]; 2. 2-David Gravel[3]; 3. 41-Carson Macedo[4]; 4. 1S-Logan Schuchart[7]; 5. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild[5]; 6. 15-Donny Schatz[15]; 7. 18-Giovanni Scelzi[10]; 8. 23-Garet Williamson[19]; 9. 17B-Bill Balog[18]; 10. 99-Skylar Gee[11]; 11. 27-Emerson Axsom[16]; 12. 17X-Zach Hampton[14]; 13. 7S-Landon Crawley[8]; 14. 45X-Scott Bogucki[22]; 15. 6-Dylan Cisney[13]; 16. 32-Bryce Lucius[17]; 17. 51-Ayrton Gennetten[24]; 18. 2KS-Danny Sams III[6]; 19. 55-Kerry Madsen[20]; 20. 55C-Chris Windom[2]; 21. 34-Sterling Cling[9]; 22. 77-Geoff Dodge[23]; 23. 83-Michael Kofoid[12]; 24. 3Z-Brock Zearfoss[21]