Fun Weekend Kicks off USAC Season for Gage Walker
By Jessica Jenkins

Showing up on March 19th in DuQuoin, IL, Gage Walker was certain he and his red #7x could bring home a solid finish to kick off the year in the “Shamrock Classic”. With his team around him, he was ready to take on all competitors at the Southern Illinois Center.

Walker started sixth in the seventh (final) heat and used a couple early cautions to catapult himself into third before quickly taking second after another restart. Another yellow forced him to give the position back, but he got after it really hard and gave all he could to try and get back into second. However, laps ran out and he pulled off track with a third place, a gain of three spots that gave him a decent amount of passing points. Once he pulled back to the pits, Walker began describing how his car would get up to half throttle and then sound like it was cutting out, making a sound he hadn’t heard before. A few changes that included spark plugs and the battery was hoped to be enough to fix it.

And apparently it was. Walker was slotted to start third in Qualifier #3, but lined up on the outside row. One yellow slowed the race at halfway and he restarted on the tail of the leader. The red #7x inched closer to the leader in the closing laps, but maintained his second place and finished in that position. It was enough to easily slot him into 9th place for the feature and gave his father/crew chief time to tune the car up even more while the other races took place.

When it came time to race again, the 18-year old was ready to get going again. When the yellow waved after one lap, Walker had already passed one car and nabbed another one after the red flag. However, in the flurry of yellows that followed, a couple cars stopped ahead of him and he had nowhere to go, forcing him to stop in turn 1. Going to the back, he didn’t stay there long and advanced into 19th with leader Bryan Clauson closing on the tail of the field. When Spencer Bayston spun ahead of him, Walker had just enough space to sneak through on the inside. He continued his march through the field as yellows continued to fly and was up to 13th by the time the race finally got in some green flag racing. Eight laps later he had jumped up into seventh and set about taking over sixth. Nearing lap thirty while sticking to his plan of running the bottom, he got forced over the berm and came to a stop. With all of that track position lost, he started driving more aggressively and started gaining positions again. While racing hard with Tanner Thorson, they made contact exiting turn two and he got shoved off the track, causing him to come to a stop. Now running 17th, one lap behind the leader (according to the leaderboard) the race restarted with 18 to go. He didn’t let anything hold him back and kept racing hard to pass as many people as possible. Still running 17th with no one else on his lap, two cars ahead of him made contact directly ahead of him and there was nothing more the Indianapolis-native could do but jump on the brakes. Undeterred and back under green, he started attacking the track on the high side and finished the race off in the 16th position.

Gage Walker on the Feature:
“It was a long race. We had a lot of caution laps and the fumes were getting to me just a little bit. But it was a fun race...like the battles with Tanner and a lot of the other cars, we were just going at it and it was fun. They worked [the track] at the beginning and it was real slimy. I started ninth and everyone kept getting bunched up. I felt like I was faster than those guys at the beginning. I was trying to work the high side and we kept having restarts after restarts and I got up there. A couple cars got bunched up ahead of me and I had to jam on the brakes, stopped and had to go to the back. So I slowly was working my way back up. The track was completely brushed off and there was only an inside lane. I made my way back up and was battling with another car; we were all really close and just kind of got together. I ended up jumping the berm on the inside and came to a stop. So I had to go to the back again and it was halfway over by then. I made up a couple positions and some cars got together in front of me and I had nowhere to go. It was just multiple things, I can’t complain. We had a really good car. We kind of struggled a little bit with the set up all night, but it wasn’t bad. The car was really good in the feature pretty much all race long. I just had to go to the tail so many times, it was just so hard with all the fast cars to make it back up.”

Gage Walker on the whole day:
“It was pretty cool. Bryan Clauson, Lauren [Stewart], USAC and everybody did an awesome job. Adding the driver intros and the little thing at the beginning where they turned off all the lights and the fog and everything, made it pretty cool for the fans. And all the little kids wanting your autograph, signing the stuff and throwing them into the crowd, it was fun, it was a good time.”

Next up for Walker is USAC’s Kokomo Grand Prix on April 8-9, so if you are in the area make sure you head out and cheer him on! For more info about this rising star, visit his website at GageWalkerRacing.com, on Twitter @GageWalker7 or his new Facebook fan page (Facebook.com/GageWalkerRacing).