Jacksonville Updates
 

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Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

What happened?

Buddy of mine texted me, 45 midgets, track lightning fast. Darren Hagen rockin it.

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Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Any updates?

Just heard Shane Cockrum won.
Felker, then Hagen. Congrats to the Groove Grabber!
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14c!!!!!

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Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

What about Kuhn in the 57

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Definitely excited for Shane and the Hardy Boys Team. Great, great win in a very stout 45 car count field. XSAN streaming was really good too

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Great show,XSAN is the best streaming yet!!!:8:

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

http://pic100.picturetrail.com/VOL72.../402526414.jpgShane, Congratulations on a well deserved win!

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

My first trip to Jacksonville. My 100th track! I felt it was a little small for winged 410's, but that made it excellent for midgets. A great field of cars.

I'm embarrassed to say I missed the pass for the lead, but I do think Shane may have went from 3rd to first in one move. The heat races were excellent.

I'm really hoping I get to Macon tonight. Otherwise I may have to finish the weekend at a pavement crate late model race!

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Shane Cockrum takes breakthrough victory in Midgets, King wins 21st in Micros to open POWRi season

JACKSONVILLE, Ill. (April 26, 2013)—Shane Cockrum drove to his first victory in the POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget Series and Dereck King extended his all-time lead in the POWRi Speedway Motors 600cc Outlaw Micro Series to 21 wins Friday night at Jacksonville Speedway.

It was a career breakthrough for Cockrum--his first triumph in a Midget--and it came against an outstanding field with 49 entries including 2012 POWRi Midget champion Andrew Felker, who finished second, and 2012 USAC Mopar National Midget champion Darren Hagen, who finished third.

Cockrum, a 31-year-old from Benton, Ill., was the UMP DIRTCar Pro Late Model Missouri champion in 2008 and decided to chase a lifelong dream of driving open-wheel cars the next season. Cliff Cockrum, his late father, was a top Midwestern Midget and Sprint Car driver in the 1960s and ‘70s.

“Unfortunately, my dad retired before I could see him race, but he took me to open wheel races at Du Quoin (Ill.) and other tracks,” Cockrum said. “I grew up idolizing Jack Hewitt, Parnelli Jones and A.J. Foyt. We had won quite a few races in modifieds and late models, but my heart was in open wheel. I didn’t want to be 31 and never had a chance to race in open wheel.

“We’d won 16 races in 2008 and we turned around and dumped everything to buy the Midget. We were fans, but we didn’t know anything about open wheel racing. It’s been an uphill battle. It’s awesome to finally win in the Midget.”

Cockrum’s victory came in his 28th POWRi feature and 36th event. His best previous finish was fifth at Fayette County Speedway in Brownstown, Ill., in 2010.

“We’re such a low budget team, we run a low number of races,” Cockrum said. “This was definitely a win for the little guy.”

Cockrum started 10th, on the outside of the fifth row, in his Esslinger-powered Triple-X. He passed Hagen and Felker in traffic to take the lead on the 25th of 30 laps and won by three car lengths.

“I knew we had a pretty good car and knew I could say with Felker and Hagan in lapped traffic,” he said. “You could say the waters parted. I got around Hagen in Turns One and Two and Andrew got caught up in traffic and I was able to slide him in Turn Four and complete the pass. I never had to switch lanes coming through the traffic. The lapped cars kept moving over to the inside. It was a technical track and you had to search out the right line.”

Felker of Carl Junction, Mo., started on the outside of the front row alongside Zach Daum of Pocahontas, Ill., and jumped into the lead at the start.

Hagen of Riverside, Calif., took advantage of three red flags in the opening 12 laps to move up to second. He passed Felker for the lead on the outside in Turn Four on the 18th lap.

Cockrum passed Felker and Hagen on the 25th lap and Felker bolted past Hagen for second on the front straight starting the 26th.

Cockrum had to deal with a restart with four to go and he didn’t have any problems leading to the checkered flag.

“I’m pretty happy with second in a real tough field to start the season,” Felker said.

Hagen said he made a mistake in traffic.

“I think I got a little cautious in lapped traffic,” Hagen said. “We made a little shock adjustment during a red and we probably went the wrong way.”

King of Vienna, Ill., started on pole with Travis Senter of Osceola, Ark., on the outside of the front row in the Micros feature.

Senter took the lead at the start, but on the seventh lap, King’s Stallard-FTZ Honda drove past him into the lead on the outside on the backstretch.

King won the 20-lap feature by six car lengths over runner-up Joe B. Miller of Millersville, Mo. Jacob Patton of Bethalto, Ill., was third.

“I had a feeling the track would be good on top,” King said. “I let Travis go at the start and wasn’t shaken up by it. I was able to get going on the outside and passed him.”

It was King’s first win for first-year owner Josh Kilgore. King, the POWRi Micro champion from 2007-09, had at least one victory in POWRi from the series inception in 2005 through 2011, but entered only five events a year ago. He’d gone 15 events without a victory.

“I didn’t put the effort in last year to run, but we’re going to run the entire season this year.”

POWRi’s Midgets and Micros race at Macon (Ill.) Speedway tonight (April 27) in the second event of the season.

POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget Series feature results (30 laps): 1. Shane Cockrum, 2. Andrew Felker, 3. Darren Hagen, 4. Dalton Armstrong, 5. Danny Stratton, 6. Tyler Thomas, 7. Caleb Armstrong, 8. Jake Blackhurst, 9. Brad Kuhn, 10. Justin Peck, 11. Colten Cottle, 12. Garrett Aitken, 13. Christopher Bell, 14. Terry Babb, 15. Levi Jones, 16. Zach Daum, 17. Mike Hess, 18. Daniel Adler, 19. Bubba Altig, 20. Bobby East, 21. Derrick Myers, 22. Austin Brown.

POWRi Speedway Motors 600cc Outlaw Micro Series (20 laps): 1. Dereck King, 2. Joe B. Miller, 3. Jacob Patton, 4. Travis Senter, 5. Jeremy Camp, 6. Bubba Altig, 7. Jason Harms, 8. Max Pozsgai, 9. J.B. Gilbert, 10 Kyle Schuett, 11. Jeremy Zumwalt, 12, Dylan Benscoter, 13, Chad Elliott, 14. Cole Campbell, 15. Trent Mulligan, 16. Carlee Gress, 17. Michael Bustamante, 18. Corey Nelson, 19. Evan Turner, 20. Nathan Benson, 21. Cale Thomas, 22. Derek Schuett, 23. Aaron Andruskevvitch.

For more information, go to www.Powri.com.

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

We at Jacksonville Speedway were glad to have you, ApexOne, and honored to be your 100th track. You saw some great racing and hopefully you get the chance to return.

The feature last night was an instant classic, and we want to congratulate Shane Cockrum on his first win. Even though Shane is from a few hours South, I can't think of a POWRi race in the past few years at Jacksonville when Shane wasn't here. Lot's of friends up here and around Springfield and a very popular win for those in the racing community.

I must admit that when Hagen took the lead, I turned to a friend next to me and said... "It's over". Nope. That was just the beginning!

Joe B. Miller... you are going to make yourself one heck of a 410 winged sprint driver. You beat some really good cars on their home track last night with just a handful of starts under your belt. Congrats, but don't be a stranger to Jacksonville... our guys are going to want a rematch!

Thanks to everyone involved with POWRi for putting on a great show. We wish you the best of luck tonight at Mighty Macon Speedway. We will see you all again for our Illinois Midget Week show June 6th. Can't wait!

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Congrats to Shane on your big win!! :9::32:

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Does Shane run Infinity shocks?

Jerry #66j
stida.com/HalfMoon

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Originally Posted by Jerry Spencer:
Does Shane run Infinity shocks?

Jerry #66j
stida.com/HalfMoon

Yes he does! 2 guys on Infinity Shocks in the midgets last night (Cockrum and Colten Cottle), and both made the A-Main with Cockrum taking the win!

Congrats to Shane..its been a long time coming and I'm glad I got to see it on XSan!:22:

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Updates wouldn't work. I tried all night long. Not sure why but the cell service was about nil in the grandstands.

The racing was very good and moved right along as it should. I am very glad I went.

Sorry I wasn't able to help!
:22:

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

I'm going to go out on a limb here about cell service. First, Verizon is a black hole in Jacksonville. Don't even try. Frustrates our people from Springfield 30 miles away with Verizon that they get no decent data connection here.

AT&T has 3/4g in Jacksonville and it usually works great at the track, although the tower for 3/4g is on the other end of town (not sure what the cell tower in our pit area does, but it's for sure not AT&T high speed data or Verizon).

But last night all of us with AT&T were noticing problems with internet data. Kind of like what happens when I'm at a major sporting event sometimes. Then it dawned on me that Ross Wece and XSAN were streaming the video feed through AT&T from the track. I'm not a cellular expert, but my guess is that somehow they had the bandwidth in our area eaten up.

Not sure about that, but it just seems that there was a bandwidth issue going on with AT&T. Would love to hear other opinions on that so we might know in the future. Glad XSAN was here and Ross is our buddy... but could that have been the cause?

It won't be a problem in the future because we are getting broadband wired to the track soon.

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Never mind. Just talked to Ross on his way to Knoxville after some rainouts around here and he just informed me that they were streaming on T-Moble. oops. AT&T must have just been having problems last night around here.

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Originally Posted by kdobson:
Never mind. Just talked to Ross on his way to Knoxville after some rainouts around here and he just informed me that they were streaming on T-Moble. oops. AT&T must have just been having problems last night around here.

Thanks for the info.
Not sure what the issue was then. I never had trouble there before. I've had AT&T for a long time. I even had 3 to 4 bars showing and kept trying to piggyback off a weak Wi-Fi that was close by but it wouldn't hold. Nice to know the track is trying to accommodate.

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

Not to turn this into a broadband discussion, but if there's anyone here that knows this kind of stuff, I would appreciate some insight...

Last week I was at the grocery store and notice my phone indicated I was in an AT&T wifi hotspot. So I called our connection at AT&T to see if that's something we could do at the race track along the same lines and was told that it wouldn't work with a bunch of people using data at the same time. Basically those AT&T hotspots are a single data connection that then others can use through wifi without burning their own data. So people with At&T are better off just using their own existing connection.

We are planning to get some good wired service to the track to use for video streams for stuff like last night with xsan, and also to stream internet feeds from other big races to our bar area. But, I would also like to make a wifi connection available to our fans so that the Verizon customers aren't without any data while at the track.

I have no idea whether that is practical with 1,000 or more people in the grandstand without spending a small fortune on a lot of bandwidth and high dollar equipment. Does anybody know whether making public wifi available at a race track is going to be too much for an average internet connection to handle? If it's possible with an average broadband plan and a few $50 wireless routers or whatever, we'd like to do it.

Re: Jacksonville Updates
 

I've seen several Powri shows & haven't been disappointed yet. Jacksonville is the perfect track for the midgets. Great racing for the lead in the feature.