WINDOM DOUBLES UP AT "4-CROWN" WITH FIRST TRAXXAS SILVER CROWN WIN, EAST TAKES SECOND-STRAIGHT SERIES TITLE
Rossburg, Ohio.......Chris Windom of Canton, Illinois began the night without an Eldora win nor a Traxxas Silver Crown Series victory to his name. By the end of the night, he became a two-time Eldora winner and finally broke through with a strong win in the 50-lap Silver Crown finale to close the "4-Crown Nationals." While Windom won, Bobby East locked up his second-straight series championship by finishing sixth. He also won the owner's championship for the Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing #10, as problems for other contenders Jerry Coons, Jr. and Tracy Hines propelled Windom to finish second in the championship, six points behind East.
East did a lot to help his chances at the title after grabbing the pole during ProSource Qualifying, and he led the field to green. An early caution gave Windom an opportunity on the Delaware double-file restart, as he got a big run and threw a slider under East for the lead in turn-one.
After two more early cautions, Windom kept his lead as Chris Bell moved to the second spot and they drew away from the field. Windom nearly spun on lap 16, and Bell had nowhere to go as they made contact in turn-one and kept going. Hines darted underneath both for the lead, but the yellow would quickly fly as Bell's right-rear tire shredded and additional damage from the contact took him out of the event.
With another chance at the lead, Windom was comfortably out front over the last half of the race, holding Hines behind him throughout. With just two laps to go, Hines made contact with the turn-four wall and flipped, bringing out a red flag and setting up a tense ending for Windom.
A great restart and then a big run off turn-two helped Windom to hold off a hard-charging Matt Westfall as the Rotondo Weirich - Curb Records #17 Beast/Wallace Toyota won the "4-Crown" for the second year in a row, this time with Windom at the wheel.
"I don't even know if it's really set in yet. I can't believe I won one, let alone both. I've wanted to win here for so long. We've been so close all year in Silver Crown, but I don't think I had the experience yet to finish them off. We had some problems from the incident earlier with Bell, which I hated for him, but that made it pretty ill-handling the rest of the race. They said I had a decent lead before that last restart, and our car restarts really well so I knew it'd be tough to get around us. I have to thank the RW bunch for sticking with me and getting a win together," Windom said.
Westfall finished a strong night with his runner-up finish in his first start of the season aboard the MTR-Martco - Longworth Equipment #19 Beast/Toyota.
"Marc (Longworth)'s got a really good car. We chucked the brake pads early, so we fell back quite a bit at the beginning. I went to the bottom just to be out of the way, and it really worked out for us. I was hoping for a real long run, and we got it up to second, so I wasn't even really wanting to see that caution at the end. It worked out for us, and I wish we had some brake to go after Windom a little harder at the end, but we had a good night," Westfall said.
Shane Cockrum came on strong in the latter portion of the race to claim his first podium finish in the series, and third-straight top-five, aboard the Hardy Boys Motorsports - Infinity Shocks #15 Beast/Foxco.
"Maybe we just get the middle and bottom working because I'm that scared of the wall, I don't know. My car worked really good in the middle, and I just had to keep rolling through there. I needed to get out a bit farther to arc it in there, but it was tough with guys running around the top-side. We were good last year, too, running a lot the same way. We're going the right direction with this car, and tonight we were without our crew chief Levi Jones, so hopefully with him back in our corner next year we can finish a couple better," Cockrum said.
Taylor Ferns finished a busy day that included the earlier ARCA Series event at Kentucky Speedway by finishing 4th after starting 13th to earn the "Larry Rice High Performance Award" in the Motor City Auto Transport - Simpson #35 Beast/Toyota, and Dave Darland rounded out the top-five aboard the Sam Pierce Chevrolet #26 Beast/Chevy.TRAXXAS USAC SILVER CROWN RACE RESULTS: September 21, 2013 – Rossburg, Ohio – Eldora Speedway – 32nd “4-Crown Nationals”
QUALIFICATIONS: 1. Bobby East, 10, Stewart/Curb-Agajanian-16.517; 2. Tracy Hines, 16, Lightfoot-16.598; 3. Christopher Bell, 21, Six-R-16.749; 4. Matt Westfall, 19, Longworth-16.750; 5. Chris Windom, 17, RW/Curb-Agajanian-16.879; 6. Jerry Coons Jr., 27, RW/Curb-Agajanian-17.031; 7. Kody Swanson, 25, Sachs-17.163; 8. Mitch Wissmiller, 7, RW/Curb-Agajanian-17.200; 9. Dave Darland, 26, Pierce-17.207; 10. Shane Cockrum, 15, Hardy-17.589; 11. Chris Urish, 77, Urish-17.817; 12. Joe Liguori, 99, Gormly-18.137; 13. Taylor Ferns, 35, Ferns-18.140; 14. Jarett Andretti, 14, McQuinn-18.267; 15. Patrick Lawson, 2, Lawson-18.413; 16. John Hunt, 91, Hunt-18.509; 17. Jerry Nemire, 176, Nemire-18.763; 18. Kellen Conover, 76, Conover-19.024; 19. Tad Roach, 84, Spivey-19.255; 20. Robert Ballou, 63, DePalma-NT.
FEATURE: (50 laps) 1. Chris Windom, 2. Matt Westfall, 3. Shane Cockrum, 4. Taylor Ferns, 5. Dave Darland, 6. Bobby East, 7. Joe Liguori, 8. Kody Swanson, 9. Tracy Hines, 10. Patrick Lawson, 11. Jarett Andretti, 12. Jerry Nemire, 13. Robert Ballou, 14. Jerry Coons Jr., 15. Christopher Bell, 16. Tad Roach, 17. John Hunt, 18. Kellen Conover, 19. Mitch Wissmiller, 20. Chris Urish. NT
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**Ballou flipped during practice. Hines flipped on lap 49 of the feature.
FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Laps 1-3 East, Laps 4-50 Windom.
FINAL TRAXXAS USAC SILVER CROWN POINTS: 1-East-387, 2-Windom-381, 3-Hines-359, 4-Coons-359, 5-Swanson-349, 6-A.J. Fike-272, 7-Brian Tyler-249, 8-Ferns-213, 9-Shane Hollingsworth-182, 10-Cockrum-165.