By Bill W
June 18, 2013 – The end results may not have shown it, but Kerry Madsen and the Keneric Racing #29 team felt good about the racecar in a pair of events last weekend with the World of Outlaws. On Friday at Jackson, Minnesota, qualifying was the bugaboo, and at Knoxville, if not for a flat tire, the St. Mary’s, New South Wales native was looking at a possible finish up front. This week, the WoO hit River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, North Dakota before going down the interstate on Saturday to the I-94 Speedway in Fergus Falls, Minnesota.
Kerry timed in 22nd on the ½-mile Jackson Speedway Friday. He then advanced from sixth to fourth in his heat, putting him in the main event. “Obviously, we didn’t time the greatest,” he says. “The car was good in the heat and we moved up to fourth.”
Starting in row ten, Kerry was able to pick up a few spots on a fast track that lent little passing. “We were able to get to 16th,” he says. “I felt like I was racing hard and passing more cars than where I finished. Actually, the racecar was reasonable, but there was a lot of ground to make up. It was just a tough track and a tough night to start in the back. The car was good.”
With 43 cars signed in at Knoxville Raceway, the team was ready for the challenge and timed in sixth quick. Kerry would finish third in his heat. “We qualified well, which you want to be doing with the Nationals coming up in August,” he says. “We had a really good racecar in the heat; we just couldn’t get into the top two, which you need to make the Dash. We were close.”
Kerry was charging forward in the main event from his seventh row starting spot. It was clear he had one of the faster cars on the track. “We were up to eighth by the time we had a double-file restart,” he says. “I got myself boxed in, and hit the wall coming out of four. That gave us a flat tire, and we had to restart at the back.”
The car continued to perform, and Kerry worked his way through the 26-car field to eleventh at the checkers. “We were able to get up to eleventh,” he says. “We had a good racecar all night. We were really happy with that. If we hadn’t have restarted in the back, I think the result would have been a good one.”
The Keneric Racing team was pleased with the way things went Saturday heading into the Knoxville Nationals in August. “Last time we were in Knoxville (May), we weren’t running that great, even though we ran fourth,” says Kerry. “We went with a different strategy on Saturday. With the Nationals coming up, you want to try some things. We were really happy with the car all night.”
This weekend will see a pair of bullrings, with River Cities Speedway on Friday and I-94 Speedway, a 3/8-mile, high-banked oval on Saturday. “I feel like I’ve should have won about five times there, but I haven’t won one,” says Kerry of River Cities. “I’m looking forward to a new track for me at Fergus Falls too.”
Follow Keneric Racing & Kerry Madsen on Facebook and Twitter!
Keneric Racing
www.KenericRacing.com
http://www.facebook.com/
http://twitter.com/
Kerry Madsen
http://www.facebook.com/pages/
http://twitter.com/kmr29