Grabbing a seat in Brett Lay’s winetasting.com/A1A Performance Muffler/D&F Auto Body/Heavy Metal Racing #24b a few weeks back, the 22 year old Sebastopol, CA resident known as The Human Highlight Reel won PitStopUSA Winged 360 Series Round #3 in his first full show at the controls. He backed that effort up with another victory for Lay last weekend in Round #4. After three full races with Lay, the team has won twice and finished 9th vs. Civil War 360 competition on a tough to pass track at Chico’s Silver Dollar Speedway, but this night was not about winged racing.
With no 360 racing at Petaluma this last Saturday, the PitStopUSA Wingless Sprint Cars faced off with the traveling Joe Hunt Magnetos Series. Ensign has a semi-regular ride with Jim and Annette VanLare in the VanLare Steering Repair #5v, and they’ve always been fast. This night would be no different and at the end of it all, Ensign had another notch on his belt as the main event winner.
In qualifying, the track was in less than stellar condition and was mostly gone by the time Ensign hit the track. Ignoring the fact the track was not playing as fast as it was earlier in qualifying, Ensign went out and set third fastest time of the 24 cars signed in.
After heat race inversions, Ensign would start 6th in his heat. Threading his way through traffic, and finding a line through turns 1 and 2 where no one else was, Ensign found himself second and charging at the white flag. Ensign’s elbows went up, and he snuck under race leader Gary Paulson heading into turn 3 and brought the crowd to its feet off of turn 4 as the winner of his heat race.
The main event draw was kind to Ensign as the #2 was selected for him and he started on the outside of the front row for the main event. As the green flew, Ensign caught a flier out of turn 4 and opened up a huge lead on the field, cars behind him dicing for position. The laps would tick off and Ensign would work his way flawlessly through traffic until a yellow for a spinning car slowed his progress on lap 22, just three laps shy of the checkers. This put Hunt Magneto point leader Terry Schank, Jr. on Ensign’s tail section and made this race a three lap shootout. Ensign proved best this night as Schank took one failed attempt at the lead, and Ensign would power under the checkers as a winner of his third main event at the Petaluma facility in his last four tries, no matter the configuration of sprint car.
“This one’s feels great. Gotta thank the VanLare family for the ride, crew chief Joe Stiles and (crew member) Ralphie too. Without those guys, I’m not here right now.” an elated Ensign said from Victory Lane.
Ensign is looking at the USAC Western Classic show this Friday at Watsonville’s Ocean Speedway as his next race, although a ride hasn’t been secured.
To contact Geoff Ensign, you can find him at Geoff Ensign Motorsports on Facebook, @ensignmotorspts on Twitter or you can email him at goeffensign@rocketmail.com. He can also be found on the internet at www.ensignmotorsports.com.
- Ron Lingron on Jun 11, 2012
- Article Date: 6/11/2012