From Bill W
June 25, 2013 – Brad Loyet finished Lucas Oil ASCS National Speedweek with three top five finishes, netting third in the Speedweek standings. The Sunset Hills, Missouri driver finished fourth in Lawton, Oklahoma, charged from the back of the pack to third at Sapulpa, Oklahoma and ran sixth in Wheatland, Missouri. The team will take this week to regroup for their trip with the series to the Pacific Northwest.
Last Wednesday at Lawton Speedway, things started with a run in the heat from sixth to second. “We had a really good car in the heat at Lawton,” says Brad. “We may have had enough to win it, but (Zach) Pringle was smoking really badly. I didn’t know if he had a motor lying down or a leak, but it kind of put a smokescreen up for us.”
Brad redrew a three to start inside row two for the feature. “I was running third there, and I had a pretty good car,” he says. “I was rolling the top early. It was blowing off the junk. I made a run on (Dustin) Morgan and I passed him for second, but the yellow came out. He jumped into the line I had been using after that. I went for a slidejob to pass him and Jason (Johnson) got around me. We ended up fourth. Jeff (Swindell) was really good. The three of us were bumper to bumper.”
The fourth place finish set up a Thursday date at the Creek County Speedway near Sapulpa. Brad would go from seventh to fifth in the heat. It sent him to a B main, which he won. “There wasn’t much passing in the heats, and our heat was the only one where no one fell out,” he says. “There were no yellows either, so that sent us to the B. It may have been a deal where running the B helped us out a little bit.”
A charge followed. After starting 18th, Brad made quick work of a number of cars. “Everyone kept diving for the bottom and crashing and doing what they were going to do,” he says. “I went to the top. The next thing I knew…we were eight laps or so in…I was in eighth place. I kept passing some cars.”
The surge continued, and ended with a third place finish. “The yellow for (Jason) Johnson and (Christopher) Bell came out, and all of a sudden, I was in third,” says Brad. “I just kept clicking off spots. The car was good. We didn’t have quite enough to win it, but running third was a good recovery from where the night started for sure.”
Saturday night’s events at the Lucas Oil Speedway would see Brad winning his heat from the pole. “We started on the pole, so you have to win there,” he says. “Luckily, there wasn’t a whole lot of passing in the heats, so we still made the redraw.”
Brad started sixth in the feature. “I drove up to second the first few laps of the race,” he says. “ I was headed to the bottom, and Jeff (Swindell) got me on the outside. Once I saw that, I moved to the top and Jason was already there, so I tucked in behind him.”
Brad would checker fifth. “I was just rolling the top, and all of a sudden I saw (Jonathan) Cornell flying by everyone on the bottom,” he says. “I didn’t have the car he had at all down there, so I cruised around the top to a fifth place finish.”
The Loyet Motorsports #o5 team was happy with their third place finish in a grueling Speedweek. “Finishing third in the Speedweek points with a DNF made it an o.k. week,” says Brad. “We ran pretty well really. It was a good momentum builder going out west.”
The ASCS National Series will begin its trip north and west at I-90 Speedway in Hartford, South Dakota on July 6.