From Bill Wright
April 20, 2015 – Brady Bacon scored a big victory aboard the Hoffman Racing #69 Saturday night at the USAC/MSCS “Spring Showdown” at Tri-State Speedway near Haubstadt, Indiana. The defending USAC champion grabbed the lead early and held off Robert Ballou to take home $5,000 for his win. Friday night saw the team pick up a top five finish at the Bloomington Speedway in Indiana.
Friday started with quick time at Bloomington. “We seem to qualify well at Bloomington most of the time,” says Brady. “We drew towards the start of time trials. The car was really good though.”
Brady was able to surge forward and win his heat race. “It’s always a good feeling when you can go from sixth and win the heat,” he says. “The car was really operating well.”
He would line up sixth in the main event. “We started out really well,” says Brady. “The first eight laps, I felt we had a chance at the win. We were able to get to third pretty quickly. At that point, the groove kind of got single-file around the top. The yellow came out, and we just didn’t seem to have it after that. The tire was kind of shiny when we came in. We may have sealed it up a little.”
The tire situation saw Brady lose a few spots. “We’re trying some different things on the short tracks to get better,” he says. “We got really close at Bloomington, we just had a little tire problem. We fell back to sixth, but we were able to get back by Carson Short for fifth there at the end.”
Saturday night at Haubstadt, Brady timed in third quick. Again, he shot from sixth to win his heat. “We had a really good start in the heat,” he says. “We were looking forward to going to Haubstadt and trying some new things. It really whipped us there last year. We thought we had it figured out and it changed on us. We threw some things at it Saturday and stayed aggressive. We were good all night.”
Starting fourth in the feature, it took only a few laps for Brady to get to the front. “We were almost a little too tight in the feature,” he says. “We’ve never had that happen to us at Haubstadt, so that was kind of a good feeling. We got out to the lead early. I saw Robert there towards the middle of the race. He was pressuring us pretty good and actually got by us once.”
The Broken Arrow, Oklahoma driver was able to seal his fifth win of the season. “Luckily, I was able to go the top in the next corner and a lapped car got kind of sideways in front of Robert,” says Brady. “I was able to get around him and get the lead back. There was a yellow shortly after that, and we were able to hold on. We had a really good car there compared to what we have had. Rob (Hoffman) and I were able to put our heads together to get this short track deal dialed in before we hit Indiana Sprint Week (in July).”
This weekend USAC National Sprint Car Series travels west. On Friday, the series heads to Eagle Raceway in Nebraska. On Saturday, they will visit the Junction Motor Speedway in McCool Junction, Nebraska, before ending their weekend at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas on Sunday. “These three tracks fit our style pretty well,” says Brady. “We’ve been able to win at all three of these tracks in some form of dirt car.”