[JessicaJ]

Gage Walker Claims Best Chili Bowl Finish Yet
By Jessica Jenkins

With a brand new car in the back of the trailer, expectations were high for Gage Walker in his fourth Chili Bowl Midget Nationals appearance. Those expectations proved to be entirely realistic as he was fast from the very start and recorded his best finish in the premiere race.

When he rolled on track for the twelfth and final heat race on Thursday, he took off from the fourth position and immediately jumped into second. He tried all different lines and finally hit on something good up high as he closed significantly on the leader with a couple laps left, but still left him in the runner-up spot. Gaining those two positions put him on the outside of the front row for the second Qualifier. With even faster cars on his tail, Walker clung to second through the first yellow and fought extremely hard to reclaim the spots that were being taken from him while working in the high line. He finished fifth in that race and, due to how passing points shook out, was placed in second place for the first of two B mains. Once the green flag dropped, he came out on top of a three way battle for the lead and easily drove away from the competition in the caution free race. That transferred him into the A feature and the Indianapolis native jumped up to 15th with a three wide pass. Surviving four more yellows, he was running just outside the top ten when two cars ahead of him wrecked in turn four, allowing him to gain the spots he needed to finish 10th, meaning he was in great shape for Saturday's races.

Based off of his preliminary night, Walker and his sleek, redesigned red and black 7xx were placed in 13th to start the first B feature. He had already gained two positions in the first few laps and restarted 11th after the first yellow. Once more he gained two more positions to move into the top 10. As he continued to gain ground on the cars ahead of him, a few cars spun together in turns one and two. The 19 year old almost turned low enough to avoid them as he quickly came up on the pileup, but couldn't avoid them and came to a stop on the inside lane. That sent him back to 18th with around six laps remaining. Instead of having just 3 spots to go to advance into the A, Walker now had much more work to do. Undeterred, he got by three cars in the first couple laps and narrowly avoided being clipped by two cars ahead of him as they spun in the middle of one and two. That pushed him up into the 13th spot on the restart and he instantly took to the high side until three cars came to a stop up high in turn one and he swung low to get by them. Time ran out on the super quick driver and he finished in the tenth position, just four places out of making the field of the 24 best drivers in the 2017 version of the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals.

Naturally, Walker wanted to make it to the big race and that certainly would have been easy if not for the late pileup that slowed his momentum. Still, it was his best finish in the week-long event as he continues to improve year after year with his family-owned team.

In His Words
"We had a pretty similar prelim night up until how the feature went last year. I was running kind of up farther in my prelim A main last year and just kind of caught some bad luck. So to be straight to the B main [this year] and not to worry about running any of those lower mains was a lot better and a lot less stressful. Started kind of deep in the field [in Thursday's A] and worked our way up to give us a solid finish and put us in a decent middle of the pack spot for the B main Saturday. Gave us a pretty good shot at transferring into the A main, but didn't happen. Got into a little bang up with some other cars and put me to the back and worked my way back up to tenth, but was just a few spots short. Can't complain too much, it was a lot better from last year. They gave me a really good car all week long and they are kind of the reason I got as far as I did. So we are just that one step closer and hopefully next year, we'll put it in the A main and then start working from there even farther."

Walker would also like to thank Spike Chassis, Impact, Wilwood, Business Art Designs, Superior Bearings and IPC Carbon Bodies. As well as his parents, Mike Hurst, John Godfrey, Mark Cooper, Tyler Nelson and Kevin Hurst for their help wrenching on the car, along with everyone that has helped him reach this point. Speaking about his IPC carbon body, Walker shared, "They supplied the body for this year [and] I got a lot of compliments on it. Everyone loved the new hood."

Walker may be running down to Georgia for a D2 midget race in February before returning to the Midwest for Du Quoin, IL's Shamrock Classic at the Southern Illinois Center for the start of the USAC national midget schedule. Stay tuned on Facebook @GageWalkerRacing for upcoming results and pictures from the Chili Bowl. Also, follow him on Twitter @GageWalker7 and visit his website GageWalkerRacing.com to learn more about him.