Brian Brown and the Casey’s General Stores/FVP #21 notched their 32nd career victory Saturday night at the Knoxville Raceway in NSL competition. Brian won a race-long battle with Bronson Maeschen to earn the win. The Grain Valley, Missouri driver is readying for the World of Outlaws two-night event this weekend at the “Sprint Car Capital of the World”.
On Thursday night you were at Fairmont Speedway in Minnesota with the NSL 360 Series.
Things started well with a heat race win. We were able to go from seventh to third in the Dash. At that point, we thought we had an opportunity to win. We were able to get to second right away, and chased Ian (Madsen). We felt we were in contention to win. We ended up breaking a u-joint. Sometimes that happens. That’s the first time we’ve had that happen in seven or eight years. It was one of those nights.
A lot of times you see leg injuries with a u-joint breaking, but you were fine.
We keep doing things with our seats for safety, but I think two of the more important things to be addressed are the left side safety cage for blown tires and left-side impacts, and safety blankets on our torque balls. Ours blew up, and I never had a nick or scratch on my legs. For the cost of those two items, we’ve definitely saved some injuries along the way.
It was on to Knoxville Saturday, and you timed in fifth quick.
We really weren’t happy with our qualifying or our heat race. We qualified fifth, and we need to be better than that. Qualifying fifth at the weekly show will put you tenth at the Outlaw show at the minimum. We need to pick that pace up.
You went from fifth to fourth in the heat.
The track didn’t lend to a lot of passing, but you need to figure it out and get by guys. We struggled to get by Dakota (Hendrickson) there and ended up fourth. We weren’t too happy with where we were at that point.
The invert drawn was six, which put you inside row two for the feature.
The invert helps you some nights and hurts you others. We were at least in the middle on this one. We were able to get by Brooke (Tatnell) and into second. (Leader) Bronson was doing a good job of making his laps count. I got a couple of runs. Sometimes in these cars, you get close enough to a guy that the car gets tighter and you lose some ground.
You were able to get by him late, and the two of you had a heck of a race.
He got into the fence on the front stretch and we were able to sneak by. He got back by us, and we were able to get back by him again and kind of set sail. We really don’t feel like we were perfect car-wise or driving-wise. In this day and age, with the tires the way they are, you don’t often feel like things are perfect.
I know you credit your engine builder for a lot of the team’s success.
My hat’s off to Charlie Garrett. He only has three cars in the pit area, and he had the top two on Saturday night. Our Maxim chassis have been working good, as have our FK shocks. The guys have been working really hard too.
This is a big weekend ahead with the Outlaws coming to town.
There’s a lot on the line for Knoxville in general. It’s time for the locals to get a win with the Outlaws. Hopefully, it’s us, but if it can’t be, hopefully, it’s one of the regulars. I think that would be good just for the Knoxville fans.
The two-night show should be huge!
Hopefully, the fans come out and support both nights. That will show the track that we should do a two-day show every year. That’s the way it should be. It seems there’s more hype this year than normal, and there’s a lot of activities going on for the fans. It should be a lot of fun.
- administrator on Jun 06, 2016
- Article Date: 6/6/2016