| Jerry Shaw |
7/3/17 3:18 AM |
Re: Any Tri-State updates?
Sometimes you see a race and that race was just so crazy that even though you saw a lot and you know you saw a great race, you just know that at times there was just so much going on, both up front and back in the field, that there's just no way that you were able to process everything that you saw. Tonight was one of those races. Kyle Cummins jumped out to the lead and led for a few early laps, but soon he was under serious duress from Kevin Thomas Jr, who was this night driving the Gass #17. As fast as Kyle was flying the track, it wasn't enough to hold off KT Jr, who would seize the lead, in impressive fashion. But fast as he was in pulling this off, he wasn't the fastest car on the track, as Thomas Meseraull was swooping in on both of them. Less than 10 laps in, here come TMez, going after KT for the lead, when he does this enormous slide job and actually gets by the leader going into turn four, but he just had too much momentum, slides up the track and just collides with the wall with so much force that the car comes off the wall airborne, lands semi sideways and he somehow manages to save it and is able to continue racing. He lost several sports, though. By this time, Brady Short had passed a couple and was up to fourth and Robert Ballou was well within the top 10, after starting in the 7th row. And then Cummins adjusted, found some new momentum and here he comes back after KT. And Meseraull had collected himself and was back on the prowl. And I think everybody had to be wondering "how in the hell is he doing this after he had crashed into the wall so hard? How is race car, not broken? And a little bit after that, The Mad Man had made it up to where Carson Short was at and they just went at it tooth and nail for a bunch of laps. As that was happening, Cummins had gotten the lead back. Then, a yellow came out. So, you had a restart with Cummins, Thomas, Meseraull, B Short, C Short and Ballou in the first three rows. A few laps after that, you just had a melee where there were six cars coming out of the turns moving on one another and trying to race in extremely close quarters and the ting that stood out about those few laps was that the pair of Ballou and Carson Short saw this as their time to get into the top 4. Coming out of turn 4 towards the flagstand, Robert made a slider on Carson and I think KT, Robert and Carson made contact, KT got a little sideways to avoid all that, regrouped, charged into turn one and looked to contact the front end of Ballou's car. KT Jr came to a stop, Ballou almost did, but saved it and drove on, as the yellow came out for KT. His night would be done. So we had a restart with Cummins and Meseraull in the first row, Brady Short and Ballou in the second. As soon as the green dropped, two very distinct battles began. Kyle and Thomas broke away, racing around the upper part of the track, with Kyle in the lead and Brady led Robert and they began to race each other hard, in a serious battle on the bottom part of the track. With three or four laps left, Kyle led Thomas coming out of turn 2, but Thomas just went flying down the backstretch and launched into a slider that began early going into turn 3, that was every bit as big as the one that sent him into the wall earlier, but this time he nailed it and we had a new leader. But Kyle immediately came firing back and began to apply pressure to Thomas and was just all over him until they came out of turn 4 bearing down on some lapped traffic with either 2 or 1 to go, with Thomas up high and Kyle slightly below him. Kyle dove under the lappers and quickly dispatched them, as Thomas was held up for just long enough for Kyle to gain an advantage, that this late was insurmountable. Thomas made his charge, but the damage had been done. And probably like most watching this great battle for the win, I didn't even see Ballou pass Brady for third, but he had and crossed the finish line in the last podium position. And after the post race interviews, Jason Adams was on his way back up to the booth, when he stopped to say that Thomas Meseraull had raced most of this race (from the time he smashed into to wall, to the finish) with a seriously damaged race car, which makes what we had just watched him do even more remarkable! I thought last night's thriller at LPS would be hard to top, but I think tonight's did top that one.
I left with some very definite impressions after seeing this race. One, the track was just beautiful again tonight. Secondly, here's Thomas Meseraull and Chase Briscoe Racing right in the mix, threatening for the win again, for the second night in a row. And it's just their 3rd race together. Look out Sprint Week competitors, you're going to get tired of seeing the black #5 car, by the time ISW 2017 is over. And Ballou seems to have made serious progress in his comeback, which had seemed to have hit a few rough spots after leaving victory lane at Eldora and heading back to the bullrings of Indiana.
Jerry
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