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ORSESKE CLAIMS THIRD ANNUNAL HARRY TURNER CLASSIC
By Zach Tasker
20 Cars signed into the pit area at Sycamore Speedway on Saturday night, and when the dust settled on the 1/2 mile dirt oval Doug Orseske etched his name into the record books as a winner of the Harry Turner Classic. The driver from Frankfort started on pole position after the post-heat race inversion. Early on Orseske stretched his lead over the rest of the field as Patrick Bruns, Sean Murphy and Mike Gass made their way through the field. The only yellow flag in the feature event occurred on lap 5 when Lamont Critchett spun in turn #2. The remaining laps saw Orseske once again pulled away from the cars battling behind him until a few laps remaining when the #0 started to catch lapped traffic. Bruns made a last ditch effort on the last lap to pull within striking distance, but it was too little too late.
Orseske crossed the finish line first to score his first IRS feature victory of the season over Bruns and Gass. The driver of the Orseske Farms Buzzard/Quad 4 was very humbled to win a race of this magnitude "Its a great honor, he (Harry Turner) was a great racer as well as a great mechanic on cars and everything else. Its an honor to win." Orseske said he had no idea how much of a lead he had in the early laps "I had no clue, I was screwing up the whole way along, so I just made it to the end without getting passed. That's always the plan, when I finished everyone said that I had gotten away from everyone a bit because Patrick and them were battling. But you don't know that, you think you are messing up, you swear you see shadows from the lights from the other cars behind you. I messed up just about every lap I think. I'm not the greatest on dirt compared to the rest of thee guys, I'm much more competitive on pavement, so this means a lot. I also want to thank Eric and Brian Dobis, and my wife Diana" Orseske was happy to carry home his beautiful new Trophy that was presented to him by Lance Turner
For Bruns, who won the first heat race of the night, 2nd was a good finish after a hard fought race which included contact with Sean Murphy in the final laps. "It was real close its really good to see Doug win, hats off to him it was a good race we started 10th in the feature and we came all the way up to 2nd, no shame in that at all, another good night for the full throttle racing team. I had the middle line working pretty good then I went to the bottom to wherever I could get a good run to pass cars but all in all a good night. I was surprised , Brad (crew chief) changed gears three times tonight. We were close and I think come feature time we were right in the ball park, when the track slicks off we tend to get hooked up a little bit." The middle stage of the race saw very good clean racing between Bruns and Gass. The driver of the #83 Tin Cup RV Park/Advanced Financial/Cains Marine Welding/Mobil 1/Triple T Car Wash and Lube Beast/Focus commended the young driver on his race "Hats off to Mike Gass tonight he and I had a good run going, I think we passed each other three or four times nice and clean and no contact. Also big congrats to Matt Schuck he is doing big things with that kid, I nicknamed him the coach and that is exactly what he is doing, he is coaching Mike Gass into a superstar here in the future. "
For Gass, the night started off with his second consecutive heat race victory, he then marched his way through the pack in the feature "We had a good run, the car loosened up a little towards the end of the race, needed a little more forward bite off the corner, did what we could. Its real good for the heat race, we have it figured out for the feature to , we just had to start a little ways back, its tough to go through the field." The driver of the Boomba Specialties/Panther Racing Stealth/Ecotec is getting very close to that first career IRS feature victory. "I don't let it pressure me, the more I put pressure on myself to more I'm just going to screw up. You just gotta go out there and run with what you can and give the car everything you can and it will come"
Next Saturday the Illini Racing Series returns to the Sycamore Speedway, but this time it is back to the tight confines of the 1/4 mile.