By Greg Hildebrand
PLYMOUTH—When the ground pounding non-wing sprints of USAC Indiana Sprint Week come to town you can count on the heat getting turned up on the track. Mother Nature provided sunny skies over the “Playground of Power” for the top USAC stars to shine. Tyler “Sunshine” Courtney set fast time for the night with a blistering 13.358 sec lap and went on to eclipse the field of the A main to collect the win on the second night of the Indiana Sprint Week.
C.j. Leary would have a long evening behind the wheel as he would take a win in the B to qualify for the A where he would end the night in second place. Third place was Justin Grant and Matt Westfall would get the hard charger award with an eleventh place finish from his 19th place start in the 30 lap feature.
Brody Roa and Chad Boespflug had an early evening with them making contact, during the fourth heat, flipping and neither was able to continue. Dave Darland was comfortably in a transfer spot when the red flag came out for the incident. With the field bunched on the restart Darland stumbled to fifth missing the feature by one position. Darland would have to race out of the B main to make the field, finishing 7th again missing the transfer by one.
Chris Windom and Chase Stockon started the main on the front row with Stockon taking the first lap lead but Window took over on lap 2 and kept the lead until Brady Bacon was able to get past on lap 13. Brandon Mattox would get upside down on the next lap bringing out the red flag. Mattox was not injured in the accident.
Bacon would hold onto the lead and on lap 18 Zane Hendricks would get into the turn one wall hard bringing out the final red flag of the evening.
On the restart Courtney wasted no time in getting to the lead where he would stay when the checkered flags flew eleven laps later. Leary would take second over Grant coming to the line and Bacon would hold off Jason McDougal for fourth.
600 mini-sprints were also in action Friday night with 13 taking the green flag for the A Main.
Jessee Holt started on the pole and kept the lead from the drop of the green to the checkered flag. The rest of the field was anything but static as the field of 13 was down to six at the end. Finishing second was Lakeville’s Garrett Saunders driving Chad Hartzell’s 600. Early in the event Saunders was having a rough night trying to find handle on the car but after the final yellow with only a handful of laps left he got it pointed in the right direction and moved from 5th to taking second from Nick Schaefer coming to the line.
