Lonnie Wheatley, NIXA, Mo. (April 21, 2016) – After a grinding crash at Creek County Speedway the previous weekend, a top-five run is exactly what Kyle Bellm was looking for.
The Nixa, MO, racer got it by racing to the stripe fourth in Sunday afternoon’s ASCS Warrior Region season opener at Sedalia’s Missouri State Fair Speedway.
“The way things have been going, we’ll take a fourth-place finish right now,” last year’s ASCS National Tour Rookie of the Year commented of the fourth-place run aboard the Resource Asset Management Solutions (RAMS) No. 14k Sprint Car.
Bellm looks to continue that momentum in the PPG Automotive Finishes/Colorvision machine with a pair of ASCS Regional events this weekend including Red River Region action at Kansas’ Humboldt Speedway on Friday before hometown Red River vs. Warrior Region competition at Missouri’s Springfield Raceway on Saturday.
“It will be fun to race in front of our hometown fans on Saturday, it’s not something we get an opportunity to do very often,” Bellm commented.
Last Sunday’s outing came on the heels of a wild ride down Creek County Speedway’s backstretch near Tulsa, OK, on April 8 that left the Schure Built Suspensions/Christian County Collision Repair machine a mangled mess.
“It was junk, pretty much everything was trashed,” Bellm explains of the remains of a crash after another car darted off the topside and sent him on a wild ride.
Bellm was back in action on Sunday and made the most of it in the Bybee Lawn Care/Dynotech Racing Engines entry.
He went from fifth to second in his heat race to land in the redraw, commenting that, “We weren’t great but we got by a few cars.”
Redrawing a four put Bellm outside the second row in the Schaeffer Oil/Pro Designs/Racinboys machine. “It would have helped to start on the inside,” Bellm explained of the daytime surface with rubber on the lower side.
After getting shuffled back a spot or two on the initial start, Bellm picked up a pair of positions along the way to capture a fourth-place finish despite the car not being spot-on.
“The car was better in the feature, but we should have had a deeper gear,” Bellm commented. “We just didn’t have enough gear to get off the corners the way we needed to."
It was still a strong run that Bellm and team needed.
“We’ll take it and look to build upon it this weekend,” Bellm wraps up.
Bellm gets his first look at Humboldt Speedway on Friday before home track action at Springfield on Saturday.
Up Next: ASCS Red River Region at Humboldt Speedway in Humboldt, KS, on Friday and ASCS Red River vs. ASCS Warrior Region at Springfield (MO) Speedway on Saturday.
Keep Track: Keep track of Kyle Bellm’s on-track action including schedule and results at http://www.kylebellm.com/, on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/KyleBellmRacing?fref=ts or on Twitter at @kylebellmracing.
If you would like Kyle Bellm Racing press releases e-mailed directly to you, send your e-mail address to Lonnie Wheatley at lonniewheatley@gmail.com.
Penning the recurring series of “The Wheatley Chronicles” articles on www.sprintcarmania.com, Lonnie Wheatley provides media, public relations and more for select tracks, drivers and events. For more information, Wheatley may be contacted at lonniewheatley@gmail.com.
- administrator on Apr 21, 2016
- Article Date: 4/21/2016 by Lonnie Wheatley