From Bill W
June 4, 2013 – Brady Bacon will be back aboard the Hoffman Racing #69 sprint car Wednesday night with USAC as the Eastern Storm opens at Grandview Speedway’s “Hockett Classic” near Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania tour continues Thursday at Path Valley Speedway in Spring Run, Saturday at Port Royal Speedway and it ends Sunday at the Susquehanna Speedway in Newberrytown. Last Sunday, the Broken Arrow, Oklahoma driver was fourth in MOWA competition at the Mary Lee Standridge Memorial in Jacksonville, Illinois.
On the tight Jacksonville, Illinois ¼-mile, Brady drove from 7th to 4th in his heat. “It was a tough heat,” he says of an event that feature fellow Oklahoman Wayne Johnson. “The way the track was, it was a little tough to pass. It was one-lane on the top, so you had to do a slide job to get by people. There’s just not a whole lot of room there. I think everyone had scrape marks from getting into the backstretch wall. It was so slick, you’d get on the gas coming off two and kick that right rear off the wall.”
Still, Brady challenged for the show position, and qualified for the Dash, featuring the top eight cars in passing points. “We almost got the guy for third on the last lap in the heat race,” he says. “He got a little sideways and I clipped my right front. We were the last car into the Dash.”
Brady was lightning in the Dash, coming from eighth to challenge for second. “We made some adjustments, and we were really good,” he says. “We wound up third, but we were side by side with Danny Smith for second. That was definitely encouraging.”
The finish meant starting inside row two for the feature. “The inside wasn’t really the place to start,” says Brady. “We fell back to fourth on the start. We were able to get by (MOWA point leader) AJ Bruns for third. I was running around the top of three and four close to the wall. I got over it a little bit, and he got back by me. It took rubber shortly after that. We had to kind of ride around in line after that.”
The fourth place finish was not the goal for the Brady Bacon Racing #99 team, but the big picture was just trying to find a race to gain confidence with setup on a dry track. “Obviously, we would have liked to have won, but it was encouraging to run well in the slick,” he says. “It was definitely a long trip for not a whole lot of money, but it was good to get some confidence built up. Our next wing race will be at Ohio Speedweek, and we’ll definitely need to be good on the slick tracks there.”
This will mark the first time in five years that Brady has made the eastern swing with USAC. “We’re running Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday,” he says. “I last was out there in 2008. I’ve been to Grandview, but the other three I haven’t run in a sprint car. I’ve run Path Valley and Susquehanna in a micro.”
Follow Brady on his Website, Twitter and Facebook!
Follow Brady at his website located at www.BradyBaconRacing.com! Also keep up with him on Facebook and Twitter (which also can be accessed at the website) at the following links…
Twitter Link – http://twitter.com/BradyBacon
Facebook Link – www.facebook.com/pages/Brady-