Billings, MT — (September 21, 2015) — Travis Rilat continued his impressive winning streak in Montana last weekend.
Rilat and car owner Richard Saumure captured their third win of the season with the ASCS Frontier Region during their third weekend of competition in ‘Big Sky Country.’
“We’re still batting .500 over there,” Rilat said. “I was hoping to improve that by sweeping the weekend, but we’ll take one win. Those tracks out there suit my style. They are fast and on the gas. It’s a confidence builder.”
Rilat opened the doubleheader at Billings Motorsports Park last Friday by advancing from fifth to third place during his heat race.
“We had a late start over there,” he said. “In an effort to keep the track from dusting up and rubbering up they overwatered it. It took forever to get it ran in. The track was narrow so it made it tough to pass in the heat race and the main.”
That lined Rilat up on the inside of the sixth row for the main event.
“It was a pretty good race,” he said. “The track was narrow and choppy up top. When they threw the checkered the top five cars were within striking distance. It was pretty close racing. It was just hard to maneuver. We did decent coming from 11th. Given a couple more laps we could have had a shot at winning. It made for a good race for the fans.”
Rilat rallied to record a fourth-place result.
The weekend wrapped up on Saturday with Rilat maneuvering from fifth to second place during a heat race. That locked him into the feature redraw, where he pulled the No. 2 during the random draw to start the main event up front.
“You can’t go wrong with starting front row outside,” he said. “We got the lead going into turn one and never looked back.”
Rilat led all 29 laps of the Dan Laber Memorial to capture his sixth triumph of the season.
He and Saumure will return to competition on Oct. 15-17 at Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, Calif., for the 22nd annual Trophy Cup.