Published: August 25, 2008 11:54 pm            

Schuerenberg nips Weir on local oval

Missouri driver gets sixth win here this season.

Missouri driver Hunter Schuerenberg continued his torrid 2008 season by registering his sixth sprint car feature win of the season Sunday night at the Kokomo Speedway.

Though most of his previous wins at the dirt oval had been by fairly comfortable margins, Schuerenberg had to scrap and claw to register his latest win.

Sammy Immel paced the field the opening eight laps with defending track champion Shane Cottle along with Casey Shuman and Schuerenberg trying to reel him in. Opportunity came on the ninth lap when Coleman Gullick flipped his Hazardous Racing No. 14G in turn two, bringing out the red flag.

On the restart, Cottle used an impressive slide job in turn two to snare the lead. The Kokomo driver kept his Contos Racing/Chalk Chassis No. 4 in the top spot for the next six laps despite being under heavy pressure from Shuman and Schuerenberg. Shuman encountered mechanical woes exiting the second corner on the 12th lap and was hit in the left rear, ending his bid for victory and turning second place over to Schuerenberg.

On the 15th lap, Schuerenberg finally took the lead from Cottle, but the battle was far from over. The pair swapped slide jobs at each end of the speedway while slicing through lapped traffic.

While the two leaders were battling it out, Scotty Weir was on the prowl in his Edison Motorsports/Crume-Evans Insurance/Allen’s Body Shop/ Stephens Machine/Chalk Chassis No. 10E.

With just six laps remaining, Weir cleared Cottle and set his sights on the top spot. In the closing five laps Weir and Schuerenberg were connected before a lapped car thwarted Weir’s bid for his first win of the season at Kokomo.

“First of all, I would like to thank Shane Cottle and Scotty Weir for racing me clean,” said Schuerenberg. “I know Shane was a little sore at me Friday night at Gas City after I got into him during our heat race and knocked him out of a transfer spot. He’s a good person and both of those guys ran me very clean.”

Since Schuerenberg teamed with Jeff Walker early in the season, the duo has been arguably the top team in the state.

“It’s pretty special being able to drive for Jeff,” said the winner. “When I left the ride I had early in the season, I really didn’t know what I was going to do. Then Jeff called me one night and we were only going to run for one weekend, but we did pretty well and everything just pretty much snowballed from there.”

Thomas Meseraul finished fourth behind Schuerenberg, Weir and Cottle while Blake Fitzpatrick rounded out the top five. Jon Stanbrough came through the field to claim sixth after starting last when he couldn’t qualify his car due to mechanical woes. Immel was seventh, Corey Smith eighth, Bart Grider ninth and Dustin Smith 10th. Kokomo drivers Ron Dennis (12th), Josh Spencer (13th) and Larry Bontrager (19th) were in the feature as well.

Adam Byrkett, Schuerenberg and Cottle each won their respective heat races.

Roughly half and hour before the races were to begin, Street Stock driver Steve Maisel was calling the press box asking for directions to the track.

After starting last in the 20-lap Street Stock Special, Maisel made the most of his first visit to Kokomo as he got by Lee Hobbs on the 17th lap, then held off Jimmy Nutter to post the win.

Hobbs seemed poised to earn the victory as he paced the field until Maisel took the lead with three laps to go, although Kokomo’s Glen Gamblin definitely made his presence known the first half of the race before pulling off the track in the closing laps.

Lee Hall was third and Ryan Hines fourth after working his way through the field from the back of the pack. Andre Missig rounded out the top five.

“This is a first class race track,” said Maisel. “I’m glad I made it up here. This was a fun race, I just worked my way through traffic and here I am.”

Gamblin and Maisel each won their heat races.

For the eighth week in a row Tony Bowman was the class of the field in the Thunder Car feature event.

Starting inside the third row, Bowman escaped a five-car pileup on the first lap that saw David Atkins end up on his side in turn two. All the drivers involved emerged from their battered race cars under their own power.

When the race went green, Bowman shot to the lead exiting the second corner and never looked back the rest of the 15-lap event.

Jason Larrison hammered the cushion, lap after lap, in an attempt to run down Bowman, but had to settle for second. Loren Sharp was third and Paul Whitacre fourth. Allen Davis was fifth despite a badly damaged car from the first lap accident.

Larrison, Sharp and Davis each won heat races.

        

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