Henry Van Dam capped his season in the Northwest as perfectly as possible.
Van Dam led the distance of both the scramble and main event on Saturday at Grays Harbor Raceway, where he captured his fifth triumph of the season – a new season high – en route to claiming his second career track championship.
“It’s awesome,” he said. “It was a great group of cars that ran at Grays Harbor. To have my name on the list of champions a couple of times is a great accomplishment for our team. It’s a favorite track of ours. We have a great group of fans there that really enjoy the show. To be able to do it in front of them was pretty cool.”
Van Dam, who won his first track championship in 2011, kicked off Saturday night by leading all six laps of the scramble.
“Later in the year there’s more moisture that stays in the track,” he said. “We knew to keep the car freed up and we made the right adjustments for that to happen. I think we made a good swing from the get-go. We really didn’t have to make many changes for the feature. Most of it was seeing if the track would change and for the most part it didn’t change.”
Van Dam’s scramble win put him on the pole of the 25-lap main event.
“We got a good start,” he said. “In open air we were really comfortable with the lead. The track wasn’t real wide and lapped cars were running side by side. You had to pick your lines. I knew I had to push the issue a little bit, but I tried to make sure I didn’t put myself in a bad spot either. The lapped cars were so much slower I knew they’d be on me if I got checked up.”
Van Dam was methodical as he maneuvered through traffic without any problems to stand atop the podium at the end of the night.
“We benefitted from a good starting spot, but did what we needed to do,” he said. “It felt great to end the season at Grays Harbor with a win and the championship.”
Van Dam will wrap up his season up Oct. 15-17 at Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare, Calif., for the 22nd annual Trophy Cup.