What was going to be a week off turned into the sixth win of the year and a confidence boost for Jerrod Hull and the Rockwell American #12 team. The Sikeston, Missouri driver decided to race at the St. Francois County Raceway in Farmington, Missouri on Saturday. The team will be off this weekend in anticipation of a pair of Illinois MOWA shows August 23 and 24 at the LaSalle Speedway and the Vermilion County Speedway in Danville.
Last Wednesday, a notice from the track gave Jerrod an idea. “I got a notice from Farmington that they were running a special on Saturday with $5 admission,” he says. “I called (crew chief) Scott (Bonar), and he said, ‘Let’s do it.’ I thought we might as well do something last weekend. The last two nights at Illinois Speedweek weren’t very nice, so we made some changes and went to Farmington.”
He would start fifth in his heat race. “We were able to get to third,” says Jerrod. “The track was really fast in the heat race…it was pretty much wide open.”
The third place finish saw Jerrod start eighth in the feature. “We got a couple of cars on the start, and the caution came out,” he says. “We got a couple more cars on that restart, and then the caution came out again in another four or five laps. That was working for us.”
He would move into the runner-up spot and set his sights on leader, Tommy Worley Jr. “We were able to get to second,” says Jerrod. “I don’t know that we would have been able to get around Worley in clean air. We were both about the same speed. But with two laps to go, we hit some lapped traffic and we were able to get around him.”
The win gave the MOWA point leader and the rest of the team a needed boost of confidence. “It felt good,” says Jerrod. “It’s rare to win from eighth these days, and we had been struggling. They have some good cars at that place, so we were really happy with that, and really happy with the car. It was a good weekend to try some things, and it worked.”
Jerrod and the #12 team would like to thank: Rockwell American, Midland Performance, Super Shox, Sebastian Sand Blasting & Powder Coating, Inc., Chuck’s Small Engines, Don Hamilton, HRP, Lighthouse Christian Center, Logo Daddy, Hoosier Tire, Simpson, Weld, Automotive Machine, Maxim and Heartland Trailer Manufacturing.
Attached: Jerrod in action earlier this year at Granite City with Parker-Price Miller (01) and Chris Urish (77u) (Rob Kocak Photo)
- administrator on Aug 14, 2014
- Article Date: 8/14/2014 by Bill Wright