[Jerry Shaw]

This was a very impressive win for Brady Short. Not only for the drivers he beat to win tonight's race, but for the way he won this one. Coming out of the heat races, everybody just knew that Brady was going to be a major factor, come feature time. Not only was he fast in the way that he marched through that heat's lineup. He also checked out and was able to make the 11P car go where he wanted it to go and do what he wanted it to do. Then when CJ Leary didn't transfer out of his heat, that put the 7th fastest qualifier on the pole. Short was the 7th fastest qualifier. Many people thought that Short, looking the way that he had earlier, might just take off and dominate the race. That's not the way it happened, though. When the green was waved, I don't know whether there was contact or Brady just got out of sorts, but he was immediately shuffled back to 4th or 5th. Chris Windom took off and opened up a lead. After a few laps, it was obvious he was being tracked down by KT Jr. Short regrouped and immediately went on the hunt for positions. A little further back, Robert Ballou had gotten around Brady Bacon and another car and started to pull away in the battle for the Indiana Sprint Week title. Even further back. Kyle Cummins was starting to tear a path through the field. But would he have time? About half way through, Thomas made a move on Windom for the lead and we had a new leader. A few laps after that Short approached Chris in traffic and made an aggressive move to claim second. He was visibly catching KT. A few laps later, in traffic, Brady dove under Thomas for the lead. About that time, Robert Ballou finally won a tough battle with C.J. Leary and started getting pressure from the hard charging Cummins. After he survived that, he went to work on chasing down Josh Hodges, who showed tonight that he's a great young talent. He wrestled 5th away from Josh and then went after 4th place runner Chase Stockon. And while this was going on, KT Jr was cutting into Brady's lead as they went in and out of traffic. With a few laps left, Ballou took 4th away from Stockon and Short cleared the slower traffic and closed the show. But it took a great run, because Thomas never gave up and put in a great effort.

Brady had won the battle, but Robert had won the war. Although in the post race interview Robert seemed pretty upset with himself for not winning the battle also.

It was another great night at Tri-State Speedway. From beginning to end the track was really good and racy. Which is especially a good accomplishment for the track to hold up on a sunny day, that was nearly 100 degrees.

Jerry