Solid Night at Shamrock Classic Ends Early for Tyler Nelson
By Jessica Jenkins

When Tyler Nelson and the Jack Harris-owned team unloaded Saturday at the Shamrock Classic, hopes ran high for a great finish. Coming off his first race with the team in December, Nelson expected more in their return to Du Quoin's Southern Illinois Center.

Throughout the early part of the night, everything was on track to give him a good shot at making the feature. Using a fourth place finish in the second heat and finishing where he started in his qualifier, Nelson wound up around 30th in passing points. This put him in the fifth row for the first of two B Mains.

Fighting hard all night for each position, the Kansas City native was ready to battle his way into a top 4 position and transfer into the A Feature. He immediately jumped up one position on the first lap and set his sights on the next car before a yellow slowed the field. Restarting eighth, he endured challenges from quicker cars behind him and did his best to hold them off before disaster struck around halfway. Sticking to the bottom of the track into turn 1, a gaggle of cars ahead of him lost control and piled up in the inside lane at the exit of turn 2. With nowhere to go and zero chance to react, Nelson went straight into the melee. The damage resulting from winding up nose first against the huge berm on the inside of the track sent him back to the pits. Had he avoided the wreck, he would have been in the final transfer spot with the opportunity he was looking for. Ultimately, though, the newly-turned 20 year old was credited with a 16th finish in the USAC National Midget season opener. It wasn't the result he was looking for at the start of just his third year in a national midget, but Nelson was still optimistic with his on track performance.

With winter coming to a close, indoor race season now turns back to outdoor racing and the Indianapolis resident is looking forward to getting on track more than he had the chance to last year. Next on his schedule is Montpelier Motor Speedway's season opener April 1st, where Nelson will be back in his own #88 midget. His next start in the #91 will come when POWRi heads to Belle-Clair Speedway on April 21st. To keep up with this developing driver throughout the 2017 race season, 'like' him on Facebook by searching for Tyler Nelson Racing, follow him on Twitter @TylerNelson88 and his visit website, TylerNelsonRacing.com.

In His Own Words

"We were a lot better than we were in December when we came here. We built on that and we had a really good racecar. We finally got it to where it'd hook up and go and the motor ran strong all night. We were going forward and then a pileup collected us and ended our night. Just kind of [stinks], but that's indoor racing. It's tight and you can't do anything about it when something happens like that in front of you. We had a good car and tore up some stuff, but it'll be better when we go outdoors and actually get some room to race and put it all together so we can actually tell what we've got outdoors. It's kind of hard to tell when you're inside.

"I want to thank Jack Harris and the whole Harris Racing team. We had a lot better car than last time and I learned a little bit about what they [Jack Harris/team] expect out of a driver and they learned what I expect out of a car. We had a really fast hot rod tonight, it's just hard when you are on such a small track to move forward and make positions. I'm just looking forward to the outdoor season with them because I think we've got a good platform to go off of. We've got about 20 races with them, so we'll see what we can do there."

Results at a Glance - 2nd Annual Shamrock Classic - March 18
Heat race 2 ~ start: 3rd finish: 4th
Qualifer 2 ~ start: 7th finish: 7th
B Main 1 ~ start: 9th finish: 16th (DNF)