Big Wreck Turns into Bad Night at Macon for Patrick Bruns
By Jessica Jenkins

Rolling into Macon Speedway on Memorial Day with a wave of momentum, Patrick Bruns was confident he could take home another win if he could avoid the problems that plagued him one week earlier. In his last appearance at Macon Speedway 5 weeks ago, the Champaign, IL native drove to an easy victory in POWRi/ILLINI’s D2 series. On top of that, Bruns also won on Sunday, May 29 at Spoon River Speedway to prove his #10B MWR Technology could overcome any challenge thrown at them. On back-to-back nights May 20-21 at Lincoln Speedway/Spoon River, contact in the feature with another competitor knocked them out of contention and damaged the car enough to sideline them the second night as well.

But Bruns and his MWR Technology team had put that behind them with the win Sunday by focusing on continuing their forward momentum. True to form the orange-and-white midget took off from the outside pole position in heat 2 and took the lead. He was pulling away from the rest of the field at halfway when all of a sudden Andy Baugh’s yellow #6b came hurtling through turn 3 on the inside and smacked full-speed into the side of Bruns’ midget. Both cars went flipping violently and landed on their sides. It took a couple minutes for Bruns to climb out of the car before it was towed off back to the hauler.

Having not lost a heat race yet this year, it was a big blow to the 4-time Illini Racing champion, but his dedicated team went straight to work assessing the damage. Just looking at the car it appeared they were going to be done for the night, but each of the members on the MWR-owned team worked a miracle and had the car ready to roll back on track when the feature went green.

With the nose visibly screwed all out of place, Bruns started in 12th place and by lap three had was running ahead of three cars. He stayed on track through a couple yellows, but the steering had started locking up on him and he wisely pulled off before the rest of the field made their second attempt to go green on lap four. Ultimately he finished twelfth out of the fourteen cars that showed up.

Understandably frustrated with being knocked out of contention so early in the night due to an incident that is feeling less and less accidental (the same driver is responsible for the Lincoln Speedway wreck), it’s no wonder the analogy of a “school bully” got tossed out there. The whole team handled it the best they possibly could and it was inspiring watch them work so hard to get the car back together.

Bruns’ points lead now sits at 100 over Tyler Vantoll--double that of the last time the MWR Technology team left Macon Speedway. This coming weekend on Saturday, June 4th, the POWRi/ILLINI D2 midget series returns to Sycamore Speedway where Bruns won one month ago. Thankfully he will be fine (although at present understandably sore) and he’ll know by Friday if he is able to race this weekend. Hopefully bygones can be bygones for the other team and any hard feelings will be left behind so we won’t have to worry about Bruns or anyone else getting injured again. Like the champions they are, Bruns and his team are focused and more determined than ever to win.

To keep up with Patrick Bruns, head on over the MWR Technology/Lightning Chassis Facebook page (Facebook.com/mwrtech) and give them a ‘like’ or follow them on Twitter @MWRTechnology.