ATTICA, Ohio — A few weeks ago, Rusty Schlenk scored a late model win at Attica.
It wasn’t a big deal, given he’s a three time national UMP champion. However, it was how he won, having to utilize the bottom groove — something the McClure, Ohio, driver rarely, if ever, does.
Schlenk is a rim-rider and on Friday, May 5, Attica was more to his liking as he powered around the top and dominated on Stillwater Metals/Bazell Race Fuels Night for his 37th career Attica win.
“The track was awesome tonight. You could run all over the thing and you finally got my lane back up there for me. I’m a lot more comfortable up top. We had to win one a couple of weeks ago on the bottom old school. I had to pull that one out of the old bag of tricks. Good to be able to get back up there and rip the lip,” Schlenk said.
Only a couple of cautions kept the field close to Schlenk who, at one time, had four-second lead as he held the point all 25 laps. However, the battle for second was very entertaining with Casey Noonan finally securing the runner-up finish over JR Gentry, Matt Irey and Devin Shiels.
Ohio’s Jamie Miller, a former Attica track champion, had his work cut out for him in the 25-lap Fremont Fence 305 Sprint feature. With just two laps remaining, Kasey Jedrzejek was racing inside of Miller challenging for the lead when he hit one of the infield tires, ending his fantastic run. Miller cruised the final two laps for his 36th career division win at Attica.
Dustin Stroup, Brandon Moore, Seth Schneider and Jimmy McGrath rounded out the top five.
“I saw Kasey down there poking around and I moved down and was pretty good. I figured we was going to have a pretty good race and then I saw that tractor tire jumped out in front of him. It’s happened to me more than once. This is an RCF Chassis from Brandon Riehl and I’m really liking it so far,” Miller said.
The dirt trucks made their only appearance of the season at Attica. Miller and Keith Sorg put on a fantastic battle, racing side by side for many laps. Miller lead laps one to five, with Sorg taking over on lap six. Miller suffered a flat tire on the last lap and Sorg cruised to his third career Attica win over Dan Hennig, Brian Arnold, Jarel “Butch Latte” Perry and Dustin Keegan rounding out the top five.
“We started building this new truck late last fall. This was a shake-down night…we wasn’t expecting none of this. That’s what we built this for to run with those guys like Jamie Miller so hopefully we stay there,” Sorg said.
Feature Results (25 Laps)
1. 91-Rusty Schlenk[2] ; 2. 1N-Casey Noonan[3] ; 3. 14JR-JR Gentry[9] ; 4. 36-Matt Irey[1] ; 5. 51-Devin Shiels[8] ; 6. 12-Doug Drown[7] ; 7. 5M-Ryan Markham[13] ; 8. 50-Ryan Missler[10] ; 9. 92-Justin Chance[5] ; 10. 94-Mike Bores[18] ; 11. RH21-Gregg Haskell[12] ; 12. 29-Nate Potts[17] ; 13. 44S-Collin Shipley[4] ; 14. 75-Dusty Moore[11] ; 15. 74-Jeff Warnick[16] ; 16. 20TC-Tristan Chamberlain[19] ; 17. 42*-Bob Mayer[14] ; 18. 4G-Bill Griffith[21] ; 19. 27-Ken Hahn[15] ; 20. 45-Jamie Grochowski[20] ; 21. 101-Chester Fitch[6] ; 22. 23-Scott Fowler [22]