Bridwell Wins In An Exciting Finish At Vegas

LAS VEGAS, NV --- Beano Cup Series teams found themselves in Sin City today for a 400 mile trek around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. The front row consisted of two first time starters for the year, pole sitter John Pengelley and outside pole sitter Jordan Erickson. The early laps would give an indication of the dynamic of the race as there were five lead changes among six drivers in the races first ten laps. The early laps would also display another characteristic of the race, the yellow flag.

On Lap ½ Robert Panko would attempt to make it four wide for the third position on the very narrow backstretch. Tim McDonnell would make contact with Panko sending both of them to the outside wall. As Panko slid back down the track the #11 of Margarita Irizarry would make contact with the Mountain Dew/Carquest Chevy and would thus cause Panko’s car to turn over. Shawn Peirce took evasive action to miss the tumbling Panko and would end making slight contact with the inside retaining wall. Irizarry wouldn’t be as lucky as she merged back into oncoming traffic sending first AJ Young into the outside wall and forcing other cars to scramble to miss her. Brent Sweet, Michael Parker and Kevin Cargo would all make contract trying to avoid Irizarry and would slam into the outside wall. All three drivers would be forced to retire, although the driver her took the most exciting ride, Panko, would continue on.

“I’m gonna start calling her Milka Duno after that BS,” a bitter Kevin Cargo told a reporter after the race. For him it was the second week in a row of being taken out in a wreck.

After returning to the green the surprise of the race came out in the form of newcomer Ryan Bridwell. His #58 Chevy was quite literally thrown together just this week and during the early laps he would find his Chevy leading the field. Caution number two came out on Lap 46 when William Goshen and Tyler Wildman made contact off of turn two while racing mid pack. Both drivers made spectacular recoveries to keep their cars off the wall and each would continue on. Lap 53 would see the third caution of the day as, once again, drivers tried to run four wide down the Nellis Straightaway. Brad Fleischauer, Bob Rowden and Irizarry would make contact heading into turn three, sending Rowden and Irizarry around. Both cars would escape with minimal damage and would continue on.

Victor Quiles saw him driving his Ford into the garage area on Lap 69 with a clutch failure. For Quiles Racing Inc it was their fourth engine failure since speedweeks began and the second week in a row for Victor himself.

Lap 97 would see several cars taken out in an incident which started when Brad Fleischauer drifted up into Jason Scheck on the backstretch causing Scheck to slam into the inside wall. Scheck would spin back up the track right into the path of last week’s runner up Tim Phillips and Daniel Grzeszkiewicz. Grzeszkiewicz would go for a wild ride as Bob Rowden would hit him while the #13 Chevy was resting on the apron. The car became airborne and then came down onto the roof of Jordan Erickson’s Toyota. All drivers involved would be forced to retire from the event. Also involved were Irizarry, Ryan Bridwell and Keith Otenberger.

The field would enjoy a long green run of nearly forty laps which saw the lead swapped a multitude of times during that period. Caution would come out on Lap 139 once again for Robert Panko attempting to drive with less than four wheels on the pavement. Teammates Tyler Dalton and Edward Millard would make contact with Panko on the front stretch sending all three into the outside wall. Panko would skirt along the wall on his side for several yards before landing back on his wheels and driving his car to the garage area. Jory Fleischauer, heat winner from yesterday, would collide with the back of Dalton’s Havoline Dodge taking himself and Dalton out of the race.

Lap 150 saw the races most serious incident involving the lap car of heat winner Brian Wallace. Don Runkle attempted to pass the slower Wallace on the inside of turn two only to make contact with him on the exit of the turn. Wallace would make a contact with the wall nearly head on and would cause his car to overturn and barrel roll several times down the backstretch and then up the banking. The safety crew would arrive to the remains of the Ben & Jerry’s Chevy to help Wallace out of the car. He would be treated and released from the infield care center with a minor concussion.

The next 100 laps went incident free, minus a debris caution, as the field began to spread out. It became clear that the race was a four car duel between Lance Bridwell, Derrike Fox, Keith Black and Brian Yaczik. Those four drivers would lead the majority of those 100 laps, usually swapping them lead between themselves. Green flag pit stops began on lap 230 with the leader Derriek Fox being the first to come to pit road. He would make the same mistake Josh Chin made in the heat race the night before and would over drive the entrance to pit road. The ensuing penalty left Fox the last car on the lead lap in twelfth, barely two seconds ahead of the leader Yaczik.

During green flag pit stops there was an accident on pit road. Jack Yaudes over shot his pit near the entrance of pit road and instead of going through pit road and coming back around he decided to drive in reverse up pit road. Ryan Bridwell was turning into his pit as Yaudes was moving in reverse and collided with the #03 Navy Chevy. The accident would cause Bridwell, the fifth place car at the time, to retire from the event, while Yaudes was able to continue on.

With under twenty to go the top four cars of Black, Yaczik, Jason Meade and Lance Bridwell had broken away from the rest of the field. It appeared that the victory would come down to just those four drivers as green flag pit stops had greatly spread the field out and left only nine cars on the lead lap although Michael Strohl and Timmy Johnston were chasing them down. On Lap 251 Black had drifted back to the fifth position and when attempting to pass the lap car of Tyler Wildman would make contact with him. Black would then spin from the top side of the track to the bottom directly into the path of Edward Millard. William Goshen would then clip Millard and bring himself and Shawn Pierce into the incident. Pierce would continue on but all others would be forced to retire including front runner Black.

With the caution out the field would bunch up and the top eight cars would all be within two seconds of each other. Yaczik would lead and would continue to do so until seven to go when Fox would slip below him heading into turn three. Matthew Wells, a back runner until this point of the race, would dive even lower than Fox and would make it three wide coming off of four. Wells would come off the corner with the lead only to have Bridwell draft past him on the very next turn. Tim McDonnell would follow Fox past Bridwell and then would use the same move as Bridwell the lap before to pass Fox for the lead. Fox would retake the lead the very next turn and would lead the next lap. Coming off of turn four however he would drift high and Bridwell would take advantage of this mistake pushing his #0 Chevy underneath Fox coming off of four. Behind Bridwell there would be a three wide battle for second with just two laps remaining. Fox would brush the wall off of two and drift down into Brad Fleischauer. Fleischauer would then collect Jason Meade as both drivers would spin bringing out the caution. Bridwell would take the white and yellow flags to guarantee his first win of the year. Matthew Wells would come home second in his first start of the year, Derrike Fox would finish third, Steven Lewis fourth and Brian Yaczik would round out the top five.

Fleischauer and Meade were seen heading to Fox’s pit stall after the race. A brief scuffle occurred between the crews with Fleischauer’s crew chief throwing Fox to the ground. He was also heard to be saying, “How do you like it now you little *expletive*” NASCAR officials quickly interviened and broke up the action before any other incidents occurred. Fox was unavailable for comment.

Bridwell’s win would end FU Motorsports impressive start to the season as Fleischauer would recover to finish seventh and point’s leader Bryan Kosh would finish twelfth. Bridwell took home over $884,000 of the $6 million purse and scored Ray Racing’s first points of the year. Leaving Vegas it is clear that this serious is nothing more than a crapshoot so far this year.

---- Russ Wheeler, AP