Courtney Masters Millstream BOSS Show

The Rick’s Trucks & Equipment BOSS sprint car tour rolled into the beautiful Millstream Speedway Sunday evening with a fine field of 40 traditional sprint cars on hand. Promoters Randy and Lisa Hammer have done a wonderful job bringing the historic speed plant back to life and the well manicured facility was the perfect stage for the late summer program with near perfect weather. In the end, it was Tyler Courtney driving the Baldwin #5 who would earn his 1st ever BOSS win and he did it in style by starting 8th (last) in his heat race, then starting 9th in the feature!

In typical BOSS fashion, there was more passing in the heat races alone than most other racing events have in their entire night! The racing began with 5 action packed heat races and Courtney served notice early on that he was the guy to beat winning heat race #1 from the tail. Jarrett Andretti charged from 4th to win heat race #2. Matt Westfall in the Marshall Motorsports #33M won the third heat after starting from 5th. Shane Cottle also started from 5th to garner heat #4 while Cooper Clouse won heat #5 from the second spot to make him the only heat winner from the front row.

During the intermission for A-Main redraw, BOSS title sponsor Rick Whitaker of Rick’s Trucks & Equipment surprised the competitors, throwing an extra $500 on top to the feature winner making it $2,000 to win. He also added another $100 to the first B-Main non transfers and $50 to the second B-Main non transfer from each of the two 10 lappers.

Luke Hall won B-Main #1 over Joe Liguori. Cody Gardner threw a slider for the lead on lap 7 that didn’t stick, tagging the wall, Gardner barrel rolled 3 times in turn 4 but emerged unhurt. Steve Little and Derek Hastings claimed the Rick Whitaker bonus money as the first 2 non transfers. B-Main #2 was another passing clinic, this time put on by Kyle Simon who charged from 10th to win over Chris Gurley. Steve Irwin and Travis Hery just missed the transfer spots but collected the added money from Rick’s Trucks & Equipment.

The 25 lap main event found Jarrett Andretti and Shane Cottle on the front row with Bobby Distel and Shawn Westerfeld in row 2. Courtney had no luck with the draw on this evening and would start from the #9 slot. Known as “Sunshine”, Courtney picked his time to “shine” in the BOSS series by passing the most cars to win a feature event all season. Counting his heat race, he passed 15 cars for position in 33 laps of action and dealt with lapped traffic in the main event.

Shane Cottle led the first 12 laps of the feature until the red flag appeared for BOSS point leader and defending champion Shawn Westerfeld who flipped hard in turn 2 but emerged unhurt. Back under green, Cottle continued to lead with Courtney already to second place and Jarrett Andretti in tow. The race’s first yellow flew on lap #17 when Brandon Spithaler rolled to a stop.

On the restart, Courtney threw the monster slider on Cottle for the lead, but lost the momentum off turn 2 not only allowing Cottle back by for the lead, but Andretti shot past relegating Courtney to 3rd. A few laps later the race’s second caution flag flew when Dallas Hewitt and Bill Rose tangled in turn 1.

Only seven laps from the end, the action really heated up as the 3 car battle for the win saw Courtney finally get past Cottle for the lead. The trio then took turns testing the Millstream concrete in an epic slide job battle. Cottle hit the turn 4 wall hard enough to shake the body loose on the Hazen #57 and with 3 laps to go, Andretti tested that concrete a little too much becoming the final red flag of the evening when he somersaulted the #18 car in turn 4 but was not injured.

The 3 lap dash to the finish saw Tyler Courtney put an exclamation point on his victorious night as last year’s race winner Cooper Clouse put together a fine late race charge in the Cortad #9x to come home second over Kody Swanson in the Wolters #21K who rounded out the podium finishers. Cottle held on the finish 4th while Dustin Smith in the Dom’s Gulf #77 rounded out the top 5. Kyle Simon, Matt Westfall, Chris Gurley, Justin Owen and Chad Wilson completed the top 10. Simon and Gurley both passed 16 cars each but Simon took the hard charger honors by finishing the highest.

BOSS now takes a weekend off. The last true outlaws return to action on Saturday, September 24th back on the high banks of Atomic Speedway. Both of the previous Atomic races (July 2015 and August 2016) were historic and epic feature events. Can the BOSS gladiators make it 3 in a row?