PETERSEN MEDIA
Back aboard the Clyde and Marion Lamar owned No. 3c Saturday night, Willie Croft scratched and clawed his way to a fourth place finish with the King of the West Series amidst a wild night at the Thunderbowl in Tulare, CA.
With 28 cars on hand, Croft was the first car on the clock for time-trials, and wound up third fastest aboard the Tri-C Machine/JRI Shocks/NAAKE Suspension backed entry, putting him in the third heat.
Scheduled to start in the second row, Croft took advantage of the front row being penalized for jumping the original start, and went on to win his heat from the front row.
Continuing his string of bad luck in the Dash draw, Croft again found himself with another eight pill, but was able to work his way all the way up to the third spot, putting him in the second row in the feature event.
The feature got off to a wild start as a 10-car pile up stopped the action, but Croft was able to avoid it, and restart the race.
When the race finally got underway, Croft held strong and jumped into the second spot as he chased after Jason Meyers, until the yellow flew for debris on the sixth lap.
Slipping back to the third spot on the next restart, Croft hung tough as he worked on second running Craig Stidham, and fended off Kyle Hirst, when the yellow flew for another big pile up on the 10th circuit.
Again starting on the bottom of the track, the lap-10 restart was rough on the Citrus Heights, CA driver as he slipped back to the seventh spot, as he then began fighting his way back towards the front.
Up into fifth on the 20th lap, Croft was able to sneak into the fourth spot during a final green flag run, as he chased after Kyle Hirst.
In the end, Croft wound up with a fourth place finish.
“Restarts were tough tonight on the bottom,” Croft said. “We held strong on a couple of them, but about halfway through we slipped back to seventh or eight, but fortunately we had a longer green flag run, and we were able to make up some ground, and we ended up fourth.”
The Tri-C Motorsports team would like to thank Tri-C Machine, JRI Shocks, NAAKE Suspension, Holey Smokes BBQ, The Christian Stover Foundation, ButlerBuilt, Arai, Brown and Miller, Sander Engineering, FK Rod Ends, Hinchman Indy, Schoenfeld, K&N, Smith Precision Products, A.R.T., Kaeding Performance, Dan Olson Products, Vortex Wings, AIC Powdercoating, and GUTS for their support in 2013.
2013 BY THE NUMBERS: Races-46, Wins-5, Top 5’s-20, Top 10’s-28.
ON TAP: Croft will be a busy man this week as he will race at the Placerville Speedway on Wednesday night before heading to Silver Dollar Speedway in Chico, CA for the Fall Nationals on Friday and Saturday night.
STAY CONNECTED: Stay connected with Willie Croft Racing by visiting www.williecroftracing.com. You can also follow him on Twitter @wcroft29.