Anderson flips, then wins at Sycamore
By Zach Tasker

Saturday night at Sycamore Speedway fans witnessed one of the greatest comebacks in Illini Racing Series recent history. 23 cars packed the pit area on a beautiful night at the 1/3 mile clay oval. Rookie Kourtnay Borman and points leader Lamont Critchett would lead the field to the green flag for the 20 lap feature. It didn’t take long for things to get wild though as during a yellow flag for a lap 1 spin by Kurt Mayhew, Borman and Critchett would get tangled together under yellow in turn 1 effectively ending both racers hope at a shot at winning. After the restart all drivers were hammer down looking to get to the front. The track was prepped beautifully with multiple grooves of racing and moisture holding throughout the night. Mike Anderson would use this to his advantage picking up cars on the multiple early race restarts. Anderson flipped heavily in the opening practice session after jumping the cushion and pounding the outside turn one wall. The SET Racing crew was hard at work and patched his car up for the heat race and feature.
Meanwhile last weekend’s winner at Rockford-Sean Murphy, was climbing his way through the field at a fast rate after starting a deep 14th place in the field. Anderson had taken the lead and was starting the stretch his lead over now 2nd place Patrick Bruns who also started mid pack. Bruns would get close to Anderson on a restart with 8 laps to go but the “Passin Assasin” turned up the wick and would score the victory by a few car lengths over Bruns, Murphy, Doug Orseske and Scott Koerner. This feat was very impressive considering just a couple hours before Anderson was in victory lane, he was upside down in turn 1. “That’s SET Racing man. That is Matt, Aaron, Jeff, Roger Keith here, Mark. I could go on and on, I mean its everybody. We had Matt helping us with tires. We had guys helping us with everything, little Mark Zelinski helping us. All of them helping us, it’s a team concept. Honest to God they are the only reason we won tonight. These guys are a team, and they want to win. I love them, I love these guys. Without them this wouldn’t have happened tonight, no way. “
The driver of the #7 SET Racing Engines/Heros West Sports Grill/VIP Salon and Spa/John Lawson Auto Rebuilders/RHO Chemical/Party Bomb Energy Drink/SP2 Graphics Stewart/Ecotec knew he was going to have pressure from behind in the closing stages “I didn’t really hear him (Bruns) until after that yellow then I heard him briefly. I figured when I saw 83 and 5 on the scoreboard behind me I knew they were coming. Those boys are fast when their cars are on. I just knew that I had to keep hitting my marks. I missed them a couple times in the last 5 or 6 laps but I knew I just had to keep hitting my marks and try to make them beat me high. It’s tough to run high here” Last year’s IRS Rookie of the year was glad his hot lap dust up wasn’t worse.“ I got into some kind of crazy stuff; maybe too wet of stuff going down into one and it sucked us right into the wall. I got it sideways, I tried peddling through it and the wall just came quicker than I could peddle through. We hit the wall pretty square thank God that we didn’t break more than we did. We only broke a couple of things like the steering arm, nothing crazy and we were able to get it back together and go.
Patrick Bruns received his 2nd runner in finish in as many days on Saturday. Friday night he finished 2nd in Gas City, Indiana in the USAC Ignite Midwest Dirt Series race. Even though he hasn’t been getting victories, the Full Throttle Racing driver is having a great weekend. “We started tonight off with a great heat race victory and we really had our work cut out for us in the feature. Mike Anderson drove a flawless race. I didn’t have anything for him. No chance of keeping up with him. He pulled me on every restart. Him and Roger had that car really working well tonight.”
The driver of the #83 Full Throttle Racing/JET Motorsports/Cains Marine Welding/Tin Cup RV Park/Advanced Financial/Mobil 1/Triple T Car Wash and Lube/Depke Gases and Welding Supplies Beast/Ecotec is relishing the trip to Angell Park Speedway on Sunday “We have definitely put some miles on the old truck here the past two days and now we are going to head to Wisconsin. It’s definitely a big weekend. Hopefully if we can come out with a top 2 finish tomorrow that would be good” The Champaign, Illinois native put on a show in the 2nd heat race after starting 8th (dead last) and winning. He had to pass Joe Knippel in turn 3 of the final lap to make it happen. “I was looking for just a top five finish. The car was working great, and the holes opened up and I picked off one car a lap and we kept moving forward. When I finally got to Joe it was so much fun running with him. I thought I was going to be a 2nd place car and everything just sort of fell our way and we got the victory. Joe was laughing after the race was over that he led 7 and ¾ of that race and I led the last ¼ of the lap.”
Sean Murphy, who was last week’s winner at Rockford Speedway, was making good progress from his deep starting position but seemed to just run out of laps at the end. The driver of the #5 Potential AG/SET Racing Engines Twister/Ecotec was happy with the podium finish. “Aaron (Schuck) and I were talking, we both started way back in the field and I had no idea that it was going to end up like that. We got really lucky with a lot of caution laps and mess ups up front which just kind of put us in a good position towards the end. Before that last caution flag I was making up a little ground on Bruns but afterwards I don’t know what happened and I lost the magic.”
Heat racing action was just as frantic as the feature as in heat one Jeff Zelinski picked up the victory after Aaron Schuck spun from the lead in turn 4 with two to go after dominating much of the race. In heat #3 it was all Kurt Mayhew as he led the field to the checkered. The Illini Racing Series is now at Angell Park Speedway on Sunday for the finale of their double header weekend as Mike Anderson tries to do the double.

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS:
Feature (20 L): 1)#7 Mike Anderson 2)#83 Patrick Bruns 3)#5 Sean Murphy 4)#0 Doug Orseske 5)‪#‎9k‬ Scott Koerner 6)‪#‎21k‬ Kurt Mayhew 7)#11 Joe Knippel 8)#52 Mike Gass 9)#31 Kourtnay Borman 10)#6 Eddie Sauer 11)#54 Freedie Teer Jr. 12)#77 Lamont Critchett 13)#15 Jeff Zelinski 14)#53 Aaron Schuck 15)#4 Eric Greenup 16)‪#‎21s‬ Bob Shreffler 17)#2 Dave Ohlendorf 18)#17 Brian Dobis 19)#24 Ray Seach 20)‪#‎5d‬ Al Drangmeister 21)#43 Tommy Bigelow 22)#76 Danny Drogemuller 23)‪#‎2h‬ Andrew Hennig

Heat Race #1 (8 L): 1)#15 Jeff Zelinski 2)#76 Danny Drogemuller 3)#0 Doug Orseske 4)#6 Eddie Sauer 5)#53 Aaron Schuck 6)‪#‎4g‬ Eric Greenup 7)#2h Andrew Hennig 8)#17 Brian Dobis
Heat Race #2 (8 L): 1)#83 Patrick Bruns 2)#11 Joe Knippel 3)#77 Lamont Critchett 4)#9k Scott Koerner 5)‪#‎5s‬ Sean Murphy 6)#24 Ray Seach 7)#21s Bob Shreffler 8)#52 Mike Gass
Heat Race #3 (8 L): 1)#21k Kurt Mayhew 2)#7 Mike Anderson 3)#31 Kourtnay Borman 4)#5d Al Drangmeister 5)‪#‎2o‬ Dave Ohlendorf 6)#54 Freedie Teer Jr. 7)#43 Tommy Bigelow