Indiana Open Wheel - Paragon Speedway May 31 - Friday

The way this one was lined up, you knew it had possibilities of being a real good race, from the get go. You had AJ Hopkins starting in the 3rd row, who had been noticeably faster than everyone else in his heat race. And had demolished a real good field, here a few weeks ago. You had Shane Cottle and Joe Stornetta Jr who had to make their way in through the B Main, in the back. And you had Kyle Cummins starting in the middle, mainly because he had come out on the short end of a great heat race 2nd place battle with Jadon Rogers. Who is really showing up ready to race, week in and week out, now.

So, from the beginning, Travis Berryhill grabbed the lead and was being hounded by Dakota Jackson around the bottom. And during this part of the race, the bottom was definitely the better part of the track. The top was still an option though and you had many drivers using that as their lane of choice. Jackson would eventually pry the lead away from Berryhill and Brady Short would venture to the top part of the track and begin to stalk Berryhill. Shane Cottle was making his way through the field and had gotten past many. By this point, Kyle Cummins had committed to the top completely, from back in the 5th-6th place range, but you just felt that eventually he would have to be dealt with. Even though early, there were many times that you saw he was really playing with fire, because it was pretty dicey up there still. Berryhill had dropped back a few places and there were a lot of pitched battles involving Jordan Kinser, Jadon Rogers, Dave Darland, Hopkins, Brandon Mattox, etc. within the top ten. And when Cummins finally raced his way to third, we had a three car for several laps, where Short was all over Jackson, getting lead away from him at many points on the track on multiple laps. And just when it looked like Brady was about to take Dakota's lead for good, Kyle raced around both of them, in a daring move down the backstretch, approaching the entrance to turn 3. The crowd was going crazy while all this played out. And once he got the lead, he pulled away convincingly and erased any doubt. What a great race, at one of the most historic Indiana racing environments. One of those races that when you look around at the crowd, when they're on the cool down lap, everybody has the same "Wow!" look plastered on their face. And I see today that Stornetta ended up with the Hard Charger. He must have really put on a show down the stretch, because at the last yellow, I thought Shane had that locked up. I must have been so transfixed on the battles going on up front that I totally missed what he was doing.

Big crowd in attendance. More than 50 sprint cars in the pits, total. The track held up nicely. They moved the program along at a good pace and I was on the road by around 10:30. Again, very few yellows and did they have any reds? I can't remember one. Sorry for the delayed description of the race. I left my hotel at 3 am yesterday, to get to the Hartford airport, so I could be back in Indiana in time to go to this event. I knew it was one I didn't want to miss. So it was a pretty long day.

Jerry