MURPHY WINS FIRST RUNNING OF BOPPER MEMORIAL
BY ZACH TASKER
The first ever running of the Bob "Bopper" Thompson memorial at Grundy County Speedway for the Illini Racing Series was a huge success on Saturday night as 22 cars arrived at the Morris speed plant to honor the former series car owner. Mike Gass and Joe Knippel started the 20 lap feature on the front row after the #9 car of Scott Koerner
paced the field during the parade laps as a salute to Bopper, the former owner of the car.
Knippel had the early lead and started to slightly break away from the field. The action was fast and furious as the IRS saw another caution free feature. Sean Murphy was quickly becoming the car to watch as he carved through the field from the 6th place starting position. The "Smurfinator" had already staked his claim as a favorite for the win after winning his heat race earlier in the night from 9th starting spot. Murphy stalked the #11 car of Knippel for a couple laps before passing him for the lead just past the halfway point. The two lead cars carved through lapped traffic pulling away from the rest of the field. Meanwhile a spirited battled for third was raging with many cars swapping positions lap after lap.
In the end it was Murphy crossing the finish line first multiple car lengths over Knippel who finished ahead of the finial podium finisher Lamont Critchett. It was only fitting that a car from the SET Racing stable won the first ever Bopper Memorial. Bob Thompson's brothers (Ron, Don, Mike, and Bill) presented the podium trophy's on the front straight away. The driver of the #5 Twister/Ecotec celebrated his victory in an emotional victory lane "Bopper was an incredible guy, I mean hes the type of guy who was always in a great mood and had a funny joke for you in the shop and he just meant so much to Matt, Mark, Roger and all those guys. He is the "T" in SET Racing, and we really miss him. We all knew the four Thompson brothers were up there along with his mother and Matt kind of huddled us all together in the trailer before hand and said tonight we are not racing for money we are not racing for trophy's, we are racing for Bopper, and it was pretty cool like a little wolf pack."
The Joliet native was clearly the class of the field as he was the car to beat in the heat and the feature "The last race here we found something and I didn't try anything out of the park, I just kept doing little small changes here and there and trying to make it a little bit better and better and come feature time it was right where I wanted it to be."
For Knippel, who finished 2nd in the #11 Task Management/Schiling Lumber/KCM Accounting/Stray Bar Stealth/Focus, it was a night of redemption after a unusually slow start to the season. "We have been having motor issues ever since we got this car two years ago and it was the best this motor has ran tonight, we just didn't have enough horsepower for the 5 car , it seems like he is class of the field right now with power. We got everything worked out last time we were at Sycamore on the 1/2 mile dirt and tonight we just tweaked on it a little bit more and the motor really came to life tonight."
The best battle on the track all night was for the 3rd position, as heat race #2 winner Lamont Critchett narrowly beat out Mike Gass, Mike Anderson and Scott Koerner just to name a few. "It was a good run, we worked the high side most of the night, it was real hard to get a drive off. The track was real slick tonight, I think it was slick because of the weather and a lot of oil got laid down in practice which kind of changed things up but we did what we could, I watched the leaders sail off and by the time I finally got up to third I couldn't even see them any more so I didn't even know I finished third." The driver of the #77 T1 Racing/Hanley Farms/Knights Body Shop/SRS/Micro Blue/Matteer Oil Buzzard/VW was very honored to pick up the 3rd place trophy "Its a shame that Bopper is gone but its nice to be able to honor a good man like this and put on a good show for these guys. A good clean night of racing and good hard fought racing, that's what our series is about and that's what he supported, it was nice to have him here every week."
The Illini Racing Series returns to Rockford Speedway for their next race on Saturday August 18. The points battle is starting to heat up a little as current runner up Sean Murphy gained a massive amount of points on series leader Patrick Bruns who struggled to an 8th place finish in the feature with ignition problems.

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS:
Heat race #1 (8 laps): 1)#5 Sean Murphy 2)#54 Freedie Teer JR. 3)#11 Joe Knippel 4)#83 Patrick Bruns 5)#79 Eric Pershey 6)#22 Tom Shilkuski 7)#0 Doug Orseske 8)#8 Jason Allen 9)#10 Vinny Kuelbs JR.

Heat race #2(8 laps): 1)#77 Lamont Critchett 2)#2 Dave Ohlendorf 3)#52 Mike Gass 4)#7 Mike Anderson 5)#9K Scott Koerner 6)#9A Bob Adams 7)#53 Aaron Schuck 8)#2A Andrew Henning 9)#33 Loran Critchett JR. 10)#21 Ben Gillis 11)#17 Brian Dobis

Feature (20 laps): 1)#5 Sean Murphy 2)#11 Joe Knippel 3)#77 Lamont Critchett 4)#52 Mike Gass 5)#7 Mike Anderson 6)#9K Scott Koerner 7)#2 Dave Ohlendorf 8)#83 Patrick Bruns 9)#54 Freedie Teer JR. 10)#22 Tom Shilkuski 11)#79 Eric Pershey 12)#0 Doug Orseske 13)#33 Loran Critchett JR. 14)#21 Ben Gillis 15)#9A Bob Adams 16)#8 Jason Allen 17)#2A Andrew Henning 18)#53 Aaron Schuck 19)#17 Brian Dobis 20)#10 Vinny Kuelbs JR.(DNS) 21)#25 Travis Mahoney (DNS)