Swanson Wins In Another Thriller At Atomic
4 min read
Many fans at the Rick’s Trucks & Equipment BOSS sprint car show at Atomic Speedway saw an epic and exciting finish at last year’s event. One year later, that July of 2015 show was still the talk amongst the crowd. Traditional wingless sprint cars are known for excellent racing and close competition, but even the competitors themselves are now wondering if there isn’t a little magic in the clay at Atomic Speedway. For the second consecutive BOSS event, an epic finish, this time among no less than 5 cars over the final 5 laps had fans on their feet for an open wheel, slide job, free-for-all. In the end, it was Kingsburg, California driver Kody Swanson picking up his 3rd BOSS win of the season leading the final 3 laps to secure the win.
The evening began with 34 teams signed in to tackle the unforgiving Atomic high banks. The four heat races were won by Tony Main, Dallas Hewitt, Bill Rose and Todd Kane. All four of whom would play major roles in the main event. The twin B-Main events found Atomic Speedway regular and local winged driver, Josh Davis from Chillicothe exciting the hometown crowd charging from 4th to 1st to pick up a win in a B-Main full of non wing veterans. The second B-Main was won by Ann, Ohio driver Stratton Briggs who is one of the youngest drivers on the tour.
The 22 car main event found Chad Wilson and Bill Rose on the front row with Swanson and Dustin Smith in row 2. The third row was comprised of Todd Kane and Cooper Clouse and Dallas Hewitt and Tony Main made up the fourth row of the 8 car redraw. At the drop of the green flag, it was Wilson getting the jump on the field in search of his first career BOSS win and leading the first 3 circuits. Swanson wasted no time in jumping to 2nd and on lap 4 overhauled Wilson for the lead.
The race’s first caution flag flew for the spun car of Eric Semple off turn #2. On the restart it was still Swanson and Wilson showing the way, but in the mad scramble for position behind the lead pair, someone got into the back of Wilson sending him around and collecting Bill Rose and sending Shawn Westerfeld on a soft tumble. Wilson and Rose were done for the night but amazingly, Westerfeld was able to continue.
The second restart at lap 5 set the stage for 15 consecutive green flag laps and 4th starting Dustin Smith of Russiaville, Indiana had found something to his liking as he drove the Lou Gagliardi owned #77 car to the point to lead lap 6 and began to open a slim margin on the field. Behind Smith, a dog fight was underway with Swanson, Kane and Hewitt throwing slide job bombs at one another while Cooper Clouse and Michael Fischesser waited to pounce on the runner-up trio.
With less than 10 laps remaining, Smith’s right rear kissed the Atomic concrete wall a little too hard and began to go down. Meanwhile, Todd Kane found something through the middle of the race track and passed Swanson for the runner-up spot, then tracked down Smith to pass for the lead on lap 20, only to have it negated when the race’s third and final caution flew for an incident involving Steve Little, Cody Gardner and Eric Semple.
The caution put Smith back at the point, but the yellow did nothing to help the deflating right rear tire on the car. Back under green, Kane pulled alongside Smith, who hung on valiantly in the closing laps and held on to lead through lap 22. Working lap 23 Smith’s car pushed up the track exiting turn 2 as Swanson threw the slide job on Kane for second place and Tony Main launched off the bottom of turn 2. From inside to outside it was Main, Kane, Swanson and Smith literally 4 wide for the lead with 2 to go and Dallas Hewitt looking for a way to make it 5 wide.
Swanson was credited with leading lap 23 as he was side by side with Kane at the line. The car on the charge in the last 3 laps was Hewitt who rode the wall from 5th to 2nd with a lap to go, but Swanson held strong at the point to score the exciting win and Tony Main squeaked past Hewitt off turn 4 to steal the runner-up spot. Todd Kane finished 4th and Michael Fischesser methodically worked his way up to round out the top 5. Cooper Clouse gained on points leader Shawn Westerfeld with a 6th place run and a heartbreaking finish for Dustin Smith who wound up 7th. Justin Owen, Drew Rader and Kent Wolters rounded out the top 10 with hard charger of the race being Rader who cruised from 20th to 9th.
BOSS returns to action in 2 weeks with a new doubleheader weekend. Saturday, September 10th the wingless outlaw sprints return to Montpelier Speedway in Indiana with a much anticipated return to Millstream Speedway in Findlay, Ohio on Sunday, September 11th. BOSS also returns to Atomic on Saturday, September 24th to see if it can become THREE epic finishes in a row.
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