Before the first lap was even completed, you just knew the stars were aligned for something very special to take place. KT Jr. quickly grabbed the lead, from his second row starting position, with Kyle Cummins in tow. And lap after lap after lap, Thomas was flying around Tri-State Speedway and back up through the field, once he reached them. He couldn't shed Cummins, though. Throughout the entire race, Kyle made countless runs at him. He would catch him, sometimes even pull up beside him, then KT would reassert him self and pull away a bit. Especially when they came into heavy lapped traffic. Kyle Cummins is renowned for rifling through lapped traffic during great battles at tracks like Haubstadt. But, at this current time, there's not a better racer out there at blowing though a track full of backmarkers than KT, Jr (see 2016 Sprint Car Smackdown). As the laps wound down, Thomas looked to be gaining enough of an advantage to probably hold Cummins off, but Kyle is relentless and never gives up, so everybody knew he still had a few tricks left up his sleeve. Then there was that last yellow, on the white flag lap, for the car of Dave Darland, which had broken. So we would have a green-white-checkered restart to the finish. Cummins would have one more chance at KT. This time his shot would be on open track. A 2 lap drag race to the checkered. As they took the green and headed to one, you could see Kyle had decided to move to the top and was going to try to win this thing by going around the leader. One the first lap, there wasn't room enough for him to make a move arounfd the leader and KT remained the leader as the took the white flag, again. This time, he had tremendous mometum coming out of turn two, pulled even with the 9K car, in the middle of the backstrech and grabbed the lead as they raced into turn three. But, just that quick, KT launched into a big slider and was back in front of the 3R coming out of turn 4. But, the slider was big enough that he lost a little bit of speed in that turn, as he was completing the move. How Thomas didn't stuff it into the wall with such a daring move, is a testament to his driving abilities! Kyle, then quickly adjusted and dove below him as they sprinted towards the flagstand. Kyle got there first, but it was so close. The crowd was on their feet, with their arms in the air and screaming! Usually, large numbers of race fans head for the exits, as the checkered flag flies at the end of a sprint car race. On this night, very many of them stayed to see Kyle Cummins jump out of the car in victory lane and celebrate. A lot of them were still stunned from what these drivers had just put them though and others no doubt wanted to hear what the winner of this Instant Classic had to say. They had just witnessed history.
This battle at the front was so riveting that a few very important things were lost in all the chaos. First was a few of the battles that went on back through the field. Tyler Courtney was another of the field's aggressors. His battles with Thomas Meseraull and then with Justin Grant for the last podium spot, were both intense and sustained, hard fought victories. It took a hell of a drive to earn that last spot in victory lane.
The second thing that was remarkable was the track work that took place after sprint qualifications and modified hot laps/group qualifying. During qualifications the track had a lot of moisture in it. Cars running anywhere near the middle were sliding up the track quite a bit. A few hit the wall and several others came very close. Going to Haubstadt for many years, you know that anything other than absolute perfection in unacceptable to the guy that runs this place and you knew what the next thing we would see after these sessions were over would be. So they rolled out the track equipment, completely dug up the racing surface and slowly, but surely ran it back in. About two laps into the first sprint heat it was plain to see, that whatever imperfections had been in the racing surface, had been erased. And for the rest of the night, the track was fast, tacky and racy. The stage had been set for excellent heat race action and then for Kyle and Kevin to roll out and deliver their Oscar winning performances. It was such a great race and one of the best finishes I've ever seen!
Jerry
A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.
Winston Churchill
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dirt330, flagboy55, i love dirt track racing, jim goerge, Kydehart, mc/rider, Nate, rachasin, ryan84, Simon_says17, skids59, TNRustler
, and USAC for a great series
