From Mike Spieker
Doyon, ND — (May 30, 2015) — An outstanding field of 30 NOSA Sprint Cars checked in at Devils Lake Speedway for the series’ 26th appearance at the high-banked quarter-mile.
Brenden Wilde and Wade Nygaard lined up on the front row and led the thunderous field to the green flag. Nygaard buried his right rear in the cushion and grabbed the lead at the get go ahead of Wilde, Casey Mack, and Nick Omdahl.
Nygaard made it clear early that he was the class of the field, but the feature was stricken by debris cautions which kept the field right on Nygaard’s rear nurf bar.
The defending NOSA Sprint Car champion, Austin Pierce, sliced his way through the field and found himself in the runner up position with eight laps remaining. Once up front, Pierce tried to track down Nygaard, but both front runners were racing about the same speed as they cruised through lapped traffic.
The final caution set up a green-white-checkered finish and gave Pierce one last shot at Nygaard for the win. The green flag flew and both Nygaard and Pierce ran single file up on the cushion. They came around again to take the white flag and Pierce drove to the low side of turn one and completed a beautiful slide job on Nygaard to momentarily take the lead. Nygaard came back with a crossover move to regain the lead down the back stretch. Pierce peaked to the outside of the C&M Ford #9 in turns three and four, but Nygaard powered off the corner to take his 11th Devils Lake Speedway victory.
The win was also Nygaard’s 250th career Sprint Car win and it fell on his anniversary with his wife, Amy and his son, Zac’s, fifth birthday.
“I couldn’t ask for anything more,” said Nygaard. “It was awesome, it feels amazing.”
“Once Austin was behind me, I was kind of expecting a dive or a slide job. When I’m leading, I don’t want to drive the car too hard and screw up so I was kind of on cruise control there. Once he got by me, I saw he was driving a lot harder than I was so I had to pick up the pace a little bit,” concluded Nygaard after his win.
Brenden Wilde’s third place finish marked a career best for the Ironman Seamless Rain Gutters #35 pilot.