by Jacob Hord, @HordRaceWatcher
After a much needed rain spoiled the party on Sunday for night three of Ohio Speedweek with the All Star Circuit of Champions, things picked back up on Monday night at the Wayne County Speedway in Orrville. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. Overnight and morning rain left the dirt oval saturated and soft; and it also left many teams and drivers concerned about safety. After a handful of team meetings, and a relentless effort by the Wayne County crew, it was decided around 7pm that the show would go on.
Thirty-eight of the All Star 410’s officially signed in then to try and tame an elbow’s up Wayne County for $10,000. After hotlaps and qualifying were complete, another impromptu meeting would happen as drivers were still concerned with track conditions as both sets of turns became rutted and bumpy. All Star Officials huddled and came to the conclusion that the race would go on, but it would be for show-up points only, the feature would be shortened by ten laps to 25, and most importantly, still pay $10,000 to win. At one of the earlier drivers meetings, track owner Jason Flory said, “Give me one hour and I’ll give you a racetrack.” That’s exactly what he did.
It would be California’s Cole Macedo and Travis Philo who would lead the field to green for 25 laps of riding the bull around Wayne County. On the start, Philo wheelied and made contact with Macedo, but everyone kept going. Macedo was able to take the lead over fourth starting Cap Henry as Philo slipped back to fourth. Macedo had a .610 second lead on lap two, as 14th starting Ricky Peterson made his way into sixth.
By lap five, Macedo had bolstered his lead a little bit to .945 seconds as he approached lapped traffic. The following lap, though, Macedo bobbled in turns one and two, allowing Henry and Tyler Courtney to get by. Courtney wasn’t done there. As lap eight turned to lap nine, Courtney dove under Henry for the lead and was your new leader, but Henry was able to stay close behind.
Courtney extended his lead to 1.185 seconds on lap 11 as he navigated through lapped traffic, and all of the sudden, Henry had taken a second out of Courtney’s lead by lap 14. By lap 15, that lead was back up to 1.013 seconds. That was the nature of this Wayne County track. One miscue and you were hopping and skipping through the corners, losing all the time you worked so hard and ran so clean to get.
Henry started to close back in on the leader on lap 17, Cap still looking for redemption after he lost a $10,000 drag race on Saturday. Courtney was able to put a lapped car in between himself and Henry, and scoot away once again. The lone caution of the race came on lap 20 for a spinning Brandon Spithaler. This would set up a six lap shootout as Courtney led Henry, Macedo, Peterson, and Trey Jacobs.
On the restart, it was all Sunshine as both Peterson and Jacobs got by Macedo, who had a shock go bad. Courtney would end up running away as Henry, Peterson, and Jacobs decided who would round out the podium. Courtney won his fifth All Star race of the season by over three seconds, and it would be Henry and Peterson rounding out the podium, this being Peterson’s first career All Star podium.
“Normally we’re ripping around the fence here and it’s slick,” said Courtney, “We just kept freeing up and freeing up all night and luckily I think we were pretty good in traffic when those guys would get tight in the rough stuff. They were paying ten grand, and somebody had to take it, and it may as well be us,” the race winner continued.
“Just be patient,” Courtney said about getting through lapped traffic. “Luckily a lot of those guys would hit a rut and bounce up and get out of the way. I kept to myself down there and tried to be patient with the lapped cars, let them make their mistakes, capitalize on it and try to put more cars between me and the second place guy.”
“I just had to be smart, especially since it was for show-up points. It’s not really worth going and tearing your stuff up. There is ten grand on the line, but for the week-long deal, you aren’t gaining anything if you went out and tore your stuff up.”
“It’s been a great week so far, I obviously have a really good race car. We’ll keep chugging along and capitalize on our momentum right now and try and take advantage of it,” Courtney concluded. It was his third top three run in three Speedweek races. He now has a first place, a second place, and a third place finish going into the back half of Speedweek.
Tyler Courtney’s full interview can be viewed at this link: Tyler Courtney Wins Ohio Speedweek Round 3 6/12/23
Cap Henry’s second place interview can be viewed at this link: Cap Henry P2 finish at Wayne County Speedway in Round 3 of Ohio Speedweek 6/12/23
Ricky Peterson’s third place interview can be viewed at this link: https://www.youtube.com/embed/1QnbDNJRdT4