W.O.O Antioch, Ca
On a night when being in the lead seemed to bad luck, Steve Kinser closed out the Outlaws second west coast tour with a bang.
The 20 time champion used lap traffic to sneak past Craig Dollansky to claim his 8th win on the season.
"I've never been to this track before but a win is nice," said Kinser, a Bloomington, driver of the #11 Bass Pro Shops/J.D. Byrider/Chevrolet Maxim.
"Lap traffic was key for us tonight and I snuck under Craig (Dollansky) right before he had some issues. From there on it was just about hanging on and doing what we needed to do. We had a stretch of races in there this season where we were didn't have the finishes we wanted and we've been really good lately. This points battle is always tough but we're winning races and that's the best way to catch someone."
Kinser extended his series of consecutive top-10 finishes to seven by virtue of his win but may have had more trouble had a late race red flag for not come out. Gold Cup winner and California phenom Kyle Larson was mounting a charge on the "King of the Outlaws" when the field was stopped after previous leader Dollansky flipped in turns one and two.
"That late race red didn't help us much," said Larson, who recorded his second top-2 finish in a row and captured the nights KSE Hard Charger Award. "We had a great car tonight, it worked really well since we started 14th and got all the way up here. Before that last restart, I was on the bottom and tried to dirty it up a bit and mess with Steve a little bit. Unfortunately when I did that, it kicked up some dust and dirt in Jason Sides face and I'm sorry about that. He got me back under the yellow. All in all, not a bad two nights for us."
Rounding out the podium finishers was another California native, Tim Kaeding. The driver of the #83JR Roth Motorsports machine had problems in the dash but overcame them to score a great finish.
"I was pretty upset after we flipped in front of Jason (Meyers) and Kraig (Kinser) in the dash,"said Kaeding. "Thankfully my crew did a great job keeping me calm and fixing this race car. I just really want to thank the fans. We had and awesome crowd out here tonight for the first Outlaws show at Antioch (Speedway.) They are the reason why we get to come out here and do what we love to do. I really hope they continue to support 410 (cui) sprint car racing out here in California."
Early on, it appeared that Lucas Wolfe had a chance at winning and led the first 11 laps of the 30 lap main event. However, Wolfe tangled with another car which resulted in a spin out and left the Mechanicsburg, Pa. native with yet another heartbreak and a 19th place finish. Dollansky didn't fair much better as he finished 24th.
"We just got tangled up there and that's how it goes," said Wolfe.
Finishing fourth on the night was Kasey Kahne Racing's Brad Sweet with Sides rounding out the top 5. Title contenders Jason Meyers and Donny Schatz finished 6th and 13th respectively.
With the second and final west coast tour of 2011 in the books, the Outlaws head back to the Midwest for races at Clay County Fair Speedway in Spencer, Iowa on Friday, September 16 and Deer Creek Speedway in Spring Valley, Minn. on Saturday, September 17.
