ATTICA, Ohio — It took until the final race of the season at Attica Raceway Park, but D.J. Foos finally found victory lane, leading all 30 laps of the 410 sprint feature and withstanding a one lap sprint to the checkers after a caution.
Foos scored the $4,000 payday on Kistler Racing Products/Jon Wright’s Custom Chrome Plating presents the Mark Keegan Classic Season Championship Night.
While Foos, Attica’s 2019 champion, was celebrating the long-awaited victory, Lemoore, California’s Cole Macedo wrapped up the Callie’s Performance Products 410 Sprints track title.
For Foos the victory aboard the Burmeister Racing #16 was his fifth career victory at Attica.
“When you start on the front row of these things…this is our third time…and I was like man I keep getting beat and I don’t know what we can change to get better. Doug Berryman has been working on our shock package and Mikey’s been doing a really good job with the car. We’ve kind of found speed in qualifying and that feature was pretty much qualifying all 30 laps. I kind of got complacent there on that last run when we caught lapped traffic and I seen Cole poke his nose in there and I pulled the wing back a little bit and got better and then there was a yellow coming through three and four and I thought I was going to give it away. I felt I got through one and two pretty good on the restart,” said Foos.
For Macedo and the Ray Brooks Racing No. 18, the Attica title was one of their main goals coming into the season.
“It’s been a very stressful year racing for points. I’m going to be honest….I’m not a big fan of racing for points. I feel like we race a little bit different and don’t always go for the win. But in that race I hung it out there as hard as I could. I came into tonight trying not to think about the points and keep doing what we’ve been doing and obviously it’s been working. Super happy to get this done for Ray and Mike and Steven and all of our crew guys who bust their tails to prevent part failures and kind of putting it all in my corner and because of them it makes my job easier,” said Macedo.
Rusty Schlenk loves a big curb and Attica provided that Friday and the three time national UMP late model champion used it to dominate the Dirt Nerds Podcast/Propane.com UMP Late Model feature leading all 25 laps that saw only one caution flag. The victory was the fourth of the season at Attica for Schlenk who now owns 35 career late model wins at the track to lead all drivers.
“I love this place and I love a big cushion. The lapped cars all pretty much stayed on the bottom and that was all I needed. I had a couple of mistakes off the back side of the track but pretty much this thing was a rocket ship,” said Schlenk.
Coming into the final race, Devin Shiels had not finished out of the top five all season. All he had to do was qualify and he would lock up the track’s 2022 late model championship. However, while warming up Shiels car had a motor issue and he had to scratch for the night. Luckily the track’s point system allows for one dropped event and Shiels was able to score his fourth track title and his third in a row.
You couldn’t script a more perfect scenario for the Fremont Fence 305 Sprint feature. A driver who lives near Attica Raceway Park who hasn’t sat in a sprint car since 2017 nor a 305 sprint in 20 years, comes out on the track’s last race of the season and takes a win. That’s exactly what Brandon Martin did Friday driving a second team car for Ryan French Racing and to have his wife and children there to witness it. It was his first career 305 sprint win to go with three 410 victories in his career at Attica.
Paul Weaver, who has more career wins at Attica than any other driver in any division combined, never finished out of the top six all season and it propelled him to his sixth 305 track championship.