From Inside Line Promotions
Seth Bergman put this season’s first tally in the win column last Saturday at Magnolia Motor Speedway.
Bergman dominated his debut at the track by winning the USCS Series main event by almost nine seconds and lapping up to fourth place.
“You want to win early in the season to get things going,” he said. “You have to be able to come out and set the tone. I was really disappointed in Florida the previous weekend. We tried some things and we ended up getting worse. By the end of that weekend we went to what we knew. We were really fast in the feature on the finale, but we just came up strong too late. That was really disappointing.”
Bergman, who finished fifth during the first preliminary night of the Ronald Laney Memorial before missing the feature by only one position on the second preliminary round, rallied from 14th to seven place to cap the prestigious event at East Bay Raceway Park in Tampa, Fla., on Feb. 20.
“I really didn’t want to go two attempts at trying to get a win and come up short,” he said. “I was definitely hungry to go there and get the win last weekend.”
Bergman came out strong by charging from fifth to win his heat race at Magnolia Motor Speedway. That made him the high points driver following heat race competition. He rolled the No. 4 as the feature inversion, which lined him up on the outside of the second row for the 30-lap main event.
“I’d never ran that track so every time I was on it I was trying to learn,” he said. “I figured come feature-time it’d be on the fence. That was my game plan. That’s basically where I raced in the feature. Something I pride myself on is being able to run the cushion and the fence and that played into my hand.
“There was the initial start and I took the lead on the backstretch, but the red came out. I had to start third on the second start. I was in second before we exited turn two and on the second or third lap I took the lead.”
Bergman set a blistering pace out front en route to the triumph.
“I knew that I probably had a good lead,” he said. “I judge myself on how much I can get out of my race car. I felt by the pace I was setting that nobody could hang with that pace. I was trying to see how far I could push it. We’re trying to see how much we can get out of our car and test and tune before the Lucas Oil ASCS National Tour season begins.”
Bergman returns to action this Friday at Hattiesburg Speedway in Hattiesburg, Miss., and Saturday at Deep South Speedway in Loxley, Ala., with the ASCS Southern Outlaw Sprints.