[JessicaJ]

Night in DuQuoin Yields Good Results for Walker
By Jessica Jenkins

Gage Walker pulled into DuQuoin’s Southern Illinois Center looking to try out his brand new Spike Chassis/Wilwood Brakes/Impact/Walker & Sons #7x. Without another dirt midget event before the Chili Bowl, the inaugural “Junior Knepper 55” would be an important event to see how the new car would run. Turns out, it was pretty good and provided a solid baseline for the family-owned team to head to Tulsa with.

After 3 rounds of hot laps, Walker was still the ninth fastest driver and wound up in the top 15 speeds out of 62 cars. He started the sixth heat from the fifth position and moved to second following an early wreck ahead of him. He spent the rest of the heat chasing down Justin Allgaier and gave the NASCAR driver a run for his money in the final corner. Picking up the second place finish, and with passing points being premium, the 18 year old lined up fourth in the third Qualifier. He got a great jump into second at the start, only to have the field gathered back up to try it again. This time he settled into the fourth position and set out to claim the third position before a yellow put a halt to the run. Having survived three yellows, he stuck to the bottom of the track and held off some tough competition behind him, ultimately finishing where he started. Speaking about the Qualifier, Walker commented, “I fell back a little bit and gained some spots, so the car was pretty good in the qualifiers. Car was good all throughout the night. I mean, we struggled a little bit in the qualifier with just being too loose, but it went pretty well. The track was pretty slick all night, really no cushion or anything to lean on, so I was mostly hugging the bottom up until the feature time.”

With the way passing points worked, the Indianapolis-based driver just missed out on transferring straight to the Feature. But he was placed on the outside of the front row in the first B Main and maintained that position as leader Ricky Stenhouse Jr. walked away with the race. On restarts Walker was challenged for the position a few times but opened up enough of a cushion to easily transfer to the Feature in second place. At the beginning Walker and his red #7x started fifteenth and quickly jumped into the top ten after he avoided a major pile-up in turns 1 and 2. He picked up a couple more positions on the restart to seventh before he began to surrender positions to cars that better fit the track’s changing handling conditions. As the laps wore into the final third of the race, Walker took more to the high side of the track while running eleventh. He slipped back to thirteenth, between good friend Justin Peck and Sprint Cup star Justin Allgaier, with about ten laps left. He gained a couple positions back by the end of the long 55-lap feature to finish eleventh at the first indoor USAC race in eight years. After the race his Gage Walker Racing team discovered the right front shock had been bent on the first lap, making how competitively he still ran even more impressive.

Thinking back over the final two races of the night, Walker described his view from behind the wheel: “I had to run the B because I missed the transfer straight to the A by one position, which would have given me enough points to put me in there. We struggled with the car a little bit in the B Main with it being too loose, so we made a few changes before the feature [and were] ready to go for it. They re-did the track [before the feature] and it was pretty tacky, so we started off pretty good. The track started fading away pretty quick, getting really slick. I was up to seventh at one point and then I just kind of started losing a few positions here and there, just from the car skating out. I was trying my best, but I didn’t want to just follow the leader down on the bottom so when a caution came out, I got to adjust my shocks, which made the car a little bit better. Then I finally moved up to the top, with what little cushion there was and I stayed in about 11th, so wasn’t too bad of a night.”

On bringing a new car: “This was the first time hitting the track, so we’re happy nothing fell apart and we didn’t tear anything up. We got some good laps in it and had a pretty good feature finish. Hopefully we’ll be ready for the Chili Bowl, this gave us a little bit of a shakedown. You don’t want to go to Chili Bowl with a new car, make that long haul and have something happen there.

On racing against NASCAR/IndyCar drivers: “It’s fun. Racing against Stenhouse in the B Main, he was really fast and after the race, we talked and it’s cool. When those guys are at the midget track, they are just like you. But it’s cool to race with them, how much experience they have, and you can learn a lot from them. I definitely have fun racing close with them. Midget racing is always really good to watch, it’s always really close, especially here at DuQuoin. It was so tight and close with cars battling around the track. It was pretty fun.”

To keep up to date on Gage Walker, visit GageWalkerRacing.com or 'like' him on Facebook at facebook.com/GageWalkerRacing