Macon, IL — (June 6, 2015) — Christopher Bell of Norman, Oklahoma took his fourth POWRi Lucas Oil National Midget Series victory of the 2015 season and the 19th of his career, doubling down for the third night of Illinois SPEED Week presented by Toyota at Macon Speedway in Macon, Illinois.
Bell, piloting a Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports Toyota-powered Bullet started on the pole of the 30 lap feature event after claiming a heat race and qualifier win. The Norman, Oklahoma native shared the front row with teammate Tanner Thorson of Minden, Nevada. Leading the field to green, Bell was able to gain the early advantage over Thorson until Jake Neuman of New Berlin, Illinois brought out the yellow on lap 11, while Rico Abreu simultaneously spun in turns three and four. Holding control, Bell would work to stay ahead of Thorson until the red flag was brought out for the flipping car of Jake Neuman, who collected Jason McDougal.
Back to green flag racing, it became apparent that the front runners had found the rubber on the 1/5th mile Macon Speedway, as the top three led the chase towards lap traffic. The action would be slowed as contact between Brad Mosen and Hayden Williams would leave Williams’ machine parked off turn two. With the field bunched back up, the top three consisting of Bell, Thorson and Felker would start working away from the field as Alex Bright tried to work past Austin Brown for the fifth position.
On lap 24, the caution would fly for Nathan Smee’s spun machine. As the duo of Bell and Thorson ran one-two, Bright would finally capture the fifth position from Brown. With 28 laps down, Gage Walker would bring out the caution as his machine came to rest facing the opposite direction along the back stretch. Coming back to green, Thorson wouldn’t be able to challenge for the lead as Bell would cross the line in first, followed by Thorson and Felker. Coming in fourth was Darren Hagen and rounding out the top five was Alex Bright.
“You don’t know how hard to run when you’re out front, you don’t know how much to need to pace yourself to keep your tires underneath you on a race track like this,” said Christopher Bell. “Just looking forward to getting to Belleville where we can race.”
“It kind of sucks we had that last caution,” said Tanner Thorson. “I think we would have found out if we had a shot at winning this thing, but congratulations to Christopher, I love racing with him and I love racing with the Keith Kunz cars.”
“It’s a shame we didn’t have a better track,” said Andrew Felker. I kind of wore my stuff out too early. Tried to make a move on Tanner there and about ten to go the right rear started vibrating and I went into conserve mode.”