By: Rich Murray
Rich Murray photo
(MORRIS, IL – AUG. 9, 2014) In recent years, when a 50-lap midget race is held at Grundy County Speedway and Kyle Hamilton is in the field, he is the man to beat. Hamilton, the aspiring elementary school teacher from Danville, Indiana, was able to follow his lesson plan into victory lane after chalking up his second D’Arcy GMC STARS National Midget feature win of the season in Saturday night’s “Border Battle” that was co-sanctioned by USAC. All five of Hamilton’s wins in a midget at Grundy County Speedway have come in 50-lap features. Furthermore, it was Hamilton’s second straight “Border Battle” win and the third consecutive season that Hamilton won a USAC race at the 1/3 mile paved oval in Morris, Illinois.
Hamilton was absent from last week’s STARS race after losing an engine during the running of the “Bob Tattersall Challenge” two weeks ago. For this night’s race, Hamilton would have to rely on the Esslinger engine that was under the hood of the Todd Domark-owned #5 that Hamilton piloted in the STARS season opening race back in May. Right from the moment the team rolled the car off of the trailer on this night, the team didn’t miss a beat. After setting the top speed in both hot lap sessions, Hamilton followed it up by setting fast time during qualifications with a lap of 14.176. Hamilton would have to lineup in the fourth spot at the start of the feature due to the inversion. That put Kyle O’Gara on the pole alongside STARS National Midget point leader, Austin Prock, on the front row.
As the green flag dropped, it was clear that the drivers were not going to waste any time getting to the front despite the 50-lap distance. As the frontrunners crossed the start/finish line at the completion of lap one, the challenge for the top spot became a three-wide border battle between Indiana natives Prock and O’Gara on the outside and Illinoisan Mario Clouser charging on the inside. Clouser and Prock swarmed O’Gara on both sides going into turn one and continued their side-by-side battle for the lead going into turn two when Clouser spun down the back straightaway, bringing out the night’s first caution. Under the caution, O’Gara’s car came to a stop in front of the flagstand. Attempts to re-fire the car were unsuccessful and O’Gara’s night came to an abrupt end while Clouser restarted from the tail of the field.
On the restart, Prock built a sizable advantage over second place-running Hamilton. Over the next 45 laps, Prock was able to navigate lapped traffic with ease and looked to be well on his way to his fourth STARS victory of the year and first career USAC National Midget triumph. With just five laps to go, Prock held a six car length lead over Hamilton as he headed into turn three. Suddenly, with no other cars around him, Prock’s car spun sideways and came to a stop on the inside of the track between turns three and four. It was a tough pill to swallow for the 18-year-old Prock who was perplexed at what transpired on the 46th lap, but places all of the blame on himself.
“When I went into turn three, the car just swapped ends,” Prock said. “The car was hooked up. Unfortunately, the driver screwed it up.”
After a couple of separate late race spins brought out by Nick Hamilton and Nick Baran, Kyle Hamilton was able to take his second STARS victory of the season by holding off Billy Hulbert and Patrick Wilda, who was making his first STARS National Midget start of the season. Clouser restarted 18th after his first lap spin and charged his way through the pack for a hard-earned fourth place finish in the Bob Guess-owned entry while Ryan Probst rounded out the top-five.
Kyle Hamilton admitted that he most likely did not have enough to take the win until Prock’s spin, but acknowledges that sometimes he’d rather be lucky than good.
“I had something for him at the beginning, and then lost him for a little bit,” Hamilton said. “I got all the way back up to him, but I think we had the car just a little bit too free and he started pulling away from me. I’ll be honest; I didn’t have anything for Prock. The race just fell into my lap. That happens sometimes. You don’t want to be the guy complaining about a win. You got to be there for all 50 laps and we were that car tonight.”
A season best finish in the feature had Channahon, Illinois’ Billy Hulbert grinning from ear-to-ear.
“It was a decent race tonight,” a humble Hulbert said. “The car got better as the night went on and, fortunately, we ended up second tonight. This has been our most successful night this season. It will definitely help us out in the (STARS) standings.”
The D’Arcy GMC STARS National Midgets will hit the road for the first and only time this season when they travel to Kalamazoo Speedway on Saturday, August 16th, for another co-sanctioned show with USAC. Austin Prock leads the STARS Midget standings with a 146-point lead over Tyler Trainor while Kyle O’Gara holds a slim, one point advantage over Kody Swanson in the USAC Pavement Midget points.
D’Arcy GMC STARS National Midgets / Honda USAC Pavement Midget Series Race Results
Grundy County Speedway – “Border Battle”
August 9, 2014
QUALIFICATIONS: 1. Kyle Hamilton, 33H, Hamilton-14.176; 2. Mario Clouser, 99c, Guess-14.388; 3. Austin Prock, 41, Prock-14.441; 4. Kyle O’Gara, 27, RW/Curb-Agajanian-14.482; 5. Tyler Trainor, 25, Trainor-14.498; 6. Billy Hulbert, 88, Hulbert-14.521; 7. Nick Hamilton, 32H, Hamilton-14.548; 8. Ryan Probst, 99p, Probst-14.588; 9. Kody Swanson, 3, RFMS-14.597; 10. Patrick Wilda, 33, Wilda-14.598; 11. Travis Young, 11Y, Young-14.598; 12. Tyler Baran, 11, Baran-14.680; 13. Nick Wagner, 32w, Wagner-14.752; 14. Kyle Kettman, 6k, Kettman-14.863; 15. Grant Galloway, 16G, Galloway-14.971; 16. Rich Corson, 15c, Corson-15.055; 17. Jack Cross, 17c, Griffith-15.540; 18. Terry Ahern, 6T6, Ahern-15.543; 19. Erica Ensor, 16, Ensor-15.597; 20. Nick Baran, 87, Baran-24.571; 21. Derek Bischak, 31, Bischak-NT.
FIRST HEAT: (8 laps) 1. N.Wagner, 2. Swanson, 3. Prock, 4. N.Hamilton, 5. K.Hamilton, 6. Young, 7. Trainor, 8. Galloway, 9. Ensor, 10. Cross, 11. Bischak. NT
SECOND HEAT: (8 laps) 1. N.Baran, 2. O’Gara, 3. T.Baran, 4. Probst, 5. Hulbert, 6. Wilda, 7. Clouser, 8. Kettman, 9. Ahern, 10. Corson. NT
FEATURE: (50 laps) 1. Kyle Hamilton, 2. Billy Hulbert, 3. Patrick Wilda, 4. Mario Clouser, 5. Ryan Probst, 6. Nick Hamilton, 7. Nick Baran, 8. Austin Prock, 9. Tyler Baran, 10. Tyler Trainor, 11. Kody Swanson, 12. Nick Wagner, 13. Kyle Kettman, 14. Grant Galloway, 15. Terry Ahern, 16. Travis Young, 17. Jack Cross, 18. Erica Ensor, 19. Kyle O’Gara, 20. Rich Corson. NT
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FEATURE LAP LEADERS: Lap 1 O’Gara, Lap 2-45 Prock, Laps 46-50 K.Hamilton.