The League of Outlaws IMCA Style Modified Series, hit the track at I-55 Raceway Sunday night. In the drivers meeting, drivers wanted to discuss the possibility of running a longer race as most drivers found through practicing all week that the tires would be able to withstand the extra laps. The last practice race ran was ran at 40 laps and tire wear was far from an issue. But, that 40 lap race was a day race. With the official race, LoO decided to run 50 laps after a vote amongst drivers as everyone felt confident in the tires. The official race being a night race surely played a role into tire wear and there were several drivers experiencing tire failure.
James A. Murphy, led 49 laps but did not lead the lap that counted the most. He blew a left rear tire as he was going into turn 3 and Chris R. Cox was there to capitalize as he managed his tires better and as the two drivers came across the finish line, Cox beat James by a mere bumper length. The ESD Performance 50 is Chris’s first LoO career win.
On the other end of the spectrum of the tire wear management was AJ Hunsinger and Mitchell Maynard. Hunsinger, started in the rear as he was running 4th in his heat race but with just a couple of laps to go, got into Trevor Doyle and Trevor spun out. The contact brought out a yellow flag and Hunsinger was sent to the rear. Hunsinger would finish in the rear of his heat which forced him to start in the back of the feature race.
“I started in the rear and knew it wouldn’t make a lot of sense to try and race for position early on. I ran 32 hard laps in practice before qualifying and my tires gave up pretty early so I figured there would be quite a lot of tire wear. I figured my best chance of getting a good finish was to ride around in the back for awhile. I tried keeping an eye on James as he was the leader and wanted to run slow enough to save my tires but no slow enough to where I would risk getting put a lap down. I was able to cruise right by a lot of guys within 20 to go and wound up P4 so it was a great points day, I needed that.”
said AJ Hunsinger reflecting on his 4th place finish.
The next LoO IMCA Style Modified race will be held on the half mile at Port Royal Speedway on December 31st. We expect some drivers to miss the race as it is New Years Eve, so this might shake up the top half of the points standings and make things very interesting as the Series will only have two more points races of this season. Port Royal next, then Limaland, and the season finale at Kokomo.
Leave a Reply