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Murphy wins tight battle for Tom Arthur Memorial
By Zach Tasker
After a rain out on Saturday night the stars and cars of the Illini Racing Series were anxious to do battle Sunday night at Grundy County Speedway for the annual Night of Features featuring the Tom Arthur Memorial. A talented field of 21 cars were ready to roar in the 25 lap feature. Scott Koerner would lead Patrick Bruns and the rest
of the field to the green flag in front of a capacity crowd. Things got off to a rocky start on lap 2 when the #53 of "Hollywood" Aaron Schuck spun around making contact with the turn 4 wall. Schuck was uninjured but the car heavily damaged. The race was interrupted by a season high six yellow flags. Many cars would spin in the late stages of the race due to fluid being put down on the race track. Even though only 9 cars finished it was another great battle for the lead at Grundy. Series points leader Patrick Bruns had the lead for the majority of the race until a late restart. Sean Murphy worked the outside line to his advantage to work past Bruns. After a couple laps of great side by side racing the "smurfinator" would clear Bruns to take the victory. Rounding out the podium was a great drive by Danny Drogemuller. The driver of the #76 Show Fizz Farm Beast/Brayton was impressively only in his 2nd race back in a car after taking a few years off.
For Murphy, it was his 3rd feature victory of the season. The Joliet native also won the Bopper Memorial race in August at Grundy and at Kankakee back in June "Patrick is one hell of a fierce competitor, I threw everything plus the phone book and the kitchen sink at him and I just couldn't seem to make it stick and I think what happened was on the final lap when they finally put new oil dry down, I got a good run off the corner and he was playing it a little conservative which all night its just been slick and slimy and that's how I got the pass. I'm sure it was a fun race to watch , it was a fun race to drive and I'm just glad everybody brought her home safe today. The one advantage I had that Bruns didn't is that I could try stuff and not risk losing the (points) lead. So I was trying high and trying low and I found something there that seemed like it worked" The driver of the #5 SET Racing Twister/Ecotec was relieved to be in victory lane following a hectic week after being involved in on track contact just one week ago "Morale was pretty low in the shop this week but I'm really happy I can bring a win to SETracing and it looks like things with SET and the club are back on track for good."
For Bruns, 2nd was hard to swallow after leading so many laps early on. The Champaign driver had to be conservative through all of the oil put down on the restart "After that last caution I played it way too safe. On that last restart I didn't want to be that guy that drove down in turn 1 and spin out in front of the field and wipe out half the field so I played it extra safe and hats off to Sean Murphy for getting the win. " The driver of the #83 Full Throttle Racing/Tin Cup RV Park/Advanced Financial/Cains Marine Welding/Mobil 1/Triple T Car Wash & Lube Beast/Focus like many drivers are ready to go back to the dirt at Kankakee after a spell of pavement races "Unlike other national series that run both dirt and pavement where they have special dirt cars and special pavement cars these guys all have one car for the most part that they switch back and forth. Its part of the fun of switching it back and forth." Bruns should be a favorite for the win on Friday night as he has a dirt win to his credit this season earlier at Sycamore.
One driver who has really stepped up his game the last few weeks is the driver of the #9 West Chicago VFW Post Hawk/Focus-Bob Adams. The driver from St. Charles won his first IRS heat race just a few weeks ago at Rockford Speedway and finished in 4th position Sunday night in Morris. "The car feels real comfortable, Ive taken care of a lot of my push problems and two new front tires really does wonders in making a car stick."
Mike Gass was the winner of heat race #1, with Dave Ohlendorf winning an exciting second heat race.
The final dirt race of the season is up next for the IRS. Kankakee County Speedway is the venue on Friday September 7. Practice is at 6pm with racing at 7:30

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS:
FEATURE (25 LAPS) 1-#5 Sean Murphy 2-#83 Patrick Bruns 3-#76 Danny Drogemuller 4-#9 Bob Adams 5-#11 Loran Critchett Jr. 6-#24 Ben Gillis 7-#8 Jason Allen 8-#17 Brian Dobis 9-#0 Doug Orseske 10-#72 Frank Reiss 11-#10 Vinny Kuelbs Jr. 12-#22 Tom Shilkuski 13-#9k Scott Koerner 14-#54 Lamont Critchett 15-#2 Dave Ohlendorf 16-#7 Mike Anderson 17-#21 Bob Shreffler 18-#52 Mike Gass 19-#53 Aaron Schuck 20-#88 Mike Smith 21-#2a Andrew Henning

Heat race #1 (8 laps) 1-#52 Mike Gass 2-#5 Sean Murphy 3-#83 Patrick Bruns 4-#8 Jason Allen 5-#9 Bob Adams 6-#10 Vinny Kuelbs Jr. 7-#88 Mike Smith 8-#53 Aaron Schuck 9-#76 Danny Drogemuller 10-#21 Bob Shreffler 11-#2a Andrew Henning

Heat race #2 (8 laps) 1-#2 Dave Ohlendorf 2-#24 Ben Gillis 3-#9k Scott Koerner 4-#7 Mike Anderson 5-#22 Tom Shilkuski 6-#72 Frank Reiss 7-#11 Loran Critchett Jr. 8-#17 Brian Dobis 9-#0 Doug Orseske 10-#54 Lamont Critchett