[Jerry Shaw]

There are good races, there are great races and there are those that are ran with such a level of intensity that as a race fan, you just get drawn into. For that short period of time, you're not aware of anything else. The first 17 laps of this race was one of the latter.

When the green was waved, Carson Short out drag raced Dakota Jackson into turn one and took the early lead. Jackson was then under assault by Brady Short and would lose that spot to him. So Brady chased Carson for a couple laps, as Dakota was having third taken from him by Kyle Cummins. Carson would have a couple of bobbles losing the lead to Brady and second to Kyle. At that point, as a crowd, we all knew "It is now on!" And for the rest of the first half of this 30 lapper, as Jim said, we all watched two drivers fly around the top of this race course, driving as hard into the turns at both ends of the track as I can remember seeing. Brady had the lead, but each and every lap Kyle was just all over him. In open track, in and out of lapped traffic, it didn't matter, these two were flying. It was a thing of beauty to watch. Kyle gave Brady many, many looks and made multiple challenges for his lead, but each time, Brady would fight him off. There were a couple of yellows, but the significant one came on lap 17. On that restart, Kyle hung with Brady well and chased him down the backstretch. Whey entered turn three, Kyle threw a big slider and executed it perfectly and seized the lead for the first time, coming out of turn four. Short being Brady Short, immediately went back after Kyle, chasing him into turn one. He backed it in some, attacking the turn aggressively and when he was sliding sideways through the turn, he caught, barrel rolled, vaulted before he got to the wall and went sailing over a billboard, airborne into the pits. It was a frightening looking flip. Everybody just held their breath, not only till we found out Brady was ok and had walked to the ambulance, but also that there was nobody back there in the area that he had landed. Thank God, the answer to both was what we all wanted to hear. And a few minutes later, a quad runner entered the track from the pit entrance and the crowd cheered loudly, because on the back of this vehicle was a roughed up looking, but alert Brady Short, waving to the crowd. After all this and when they were pushing everybody back off, there was a bit of a letdown. Because before the accident, we were in the middle of a classic Haubstadt barn burner. It had been great and was probably going to go down to the wire between these two warriors and only get better. With Short suddenly out of the picture, the race was essentially over. Because, other than Brady, nobody was even close to having anything for Kyle. And when the green came back out, on two separate occasions, he just drove away. Carson Short was second, but instead of having a chance at the leader, he was in imminent danger of losing his spot to Brandon Mattox, which he did. And with a couple of laps left, he fell victim to a hard charging Kent Schmidt, who took the last podium spot away from Carson. Kyle's deserved to win one here for a long time. It was good seeing him seal the deal, since he had lost several great races by a few feet or less, in recent history here. And not only was it a hard fought and well deserved win, but it was also a very popular one, too. And as happy as he was to be the winner, he was no more ecstatic than Brandon and Kent were for what they had accomplished.

Jerry