(Bill W) May 6, 2014 – Brad Loyet and the Vacuworx Global/Miller Truck Lines #o5 team scored a pair of top four finishes last weekend with the Lucas Oil ASCS National Series and find themselves second in the points’ race. The highlight of the weekend was a third place run at Saturday’s “Rock ‘N Roll 50” at Riverside International Speedway in West Memphis, Arkansas. A busy week will see four upcoming events, including three with the World of Outlaws. Wednesday at Jacksonville, Illinois, Friday at Wilmot, Wisconsin and Saturday at Haubstadt, Indiana will the WoO stops. They will sandwich the ASCS event on Thursday at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kansas.
Things started for Brad and the ASCS at Outlaw Motor Speedway near Muskogee, Oklahoma on Friday night. The Sunset Hills, Missouri driver would start fifth and finish third in his heat. “The track down there is a big, wide open joint,” he says. “The groove was around the wall all night long. (Brian) Brown started first, Jeff (Swindell) started third and I started fifth. The green flag dropped, and that’s the order we came out of turn one, and that’s the way the heat finished. Luckily, it was enough to get us in the redraw.”
Brad would draw six and start the non-stop feature event outside of row three. He would finish fourth. “We had a really good car,” he says. “It took about five laps for the car to come in, but once it did, it was great. The race went green to checker, and a yellow would have done us a lot of good. We were racing hard for third, fourth and fifth. I was racing Jeff pretty hard and we had a top three car it seemed like. A yellow would have given us a shot at the top three.”
On Saturday, the teams traveled to the bullring in West Memphis officially known as the “Ditch”. Brad would go from eighth to fourth in his heat. “The ‘Ditch’ fits my style,” he says. “The wing doesn’t play a huge role in the race, and it really shows what the driver has up their sleeve. We had a great car in the heat race. It was slimy in the first heat, and we tried something to try to get a hold of it. We went from last to fourth, which once again put us in the redraw.”
He would start inside row two for the feature. “We talked about the race,” says Brad. “It was a fifty lap race, and we had to be good the last ten laps. We couldn’t just be awesome the first half of the race. We gambled with our tire choice and it ended up paying off for us.”
Brad settled in and found his groove. “I got a slow start, and we were back in fifth there for a while,” he says. “I got stuck behind Jeff and Johnny (Herrera) and they were dicing pretty hard. They were about the same speed, but one was on the top and one was on the bottom. I was stuck there until the red flag on lap 34, when I was able to clear them on a restart.”
For a moment, Brad’s mind was on the prize that goes with the “Rock ‘N Roll 50”. “We had another yellow with two to go, and I asked myself if I wanted to bring that guitar (trophy) home or if I wanted to run third,” he says. “On the restart, I threw a slide job in three and four. Unfortunately, the wall was a lot closer than it should have been and I tagged the wall coming out of four. If I could have got that to stick on (second place Tim) Crawley, I could have had a shot at (winner Derek) Hagar. We tried it, it just didn’t work. Still, we came out with a third place finish and we’ve been on the podium both times we’ve been to the ‘Rock ‘N Roll 50’.”
Consistency has netted the team a second place ASCS standing heading into Thursday’s race at Lakeside. “We haven’t picked up a win yet, but we’re knocking on the door hard enough that one should fall into our lap soon,” says Brad. “I think this is the highest we’ve ever been in the points. That’s our end goal, is to win this points’ championship. The first goal each night is to finish the race, and the second is to finish in the top five. We’re doing everything we have to do to put ourselves in that position and I’m pretty excited about it.”
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Brad and the Loyet Motorsports team would like to thank primary sponsors: Vacuworx Global, Miller Truck Lines, and Loyet Landscape Maintenance. Associate sponsors: Maxim Race Cars, J and D Performance Racing Engines, Butlerbuilt Professional Seat Systems, Meramec Heights Collision Center, KSE Racing, Weld Wheels, Penske Shocks, Wilwood Disc Brakes, Hepfner Racing Products, DMI, Saldana Racing Products, Rod End Supply, Bell Helmets, TI 64, Conroy Control, The Engine Heater, Ealey Transportation, and Speedway Motors.
Attached: Brad races at Outlaw Motor Speedway (Rob Kocak Photo)
- Admin Account on May 07, 2014
- Article Date: 5/7/2014 by Bill Wright