After sweeping the last two nights of the Jesse Hockett/Daniel McMillin Memorial the Two-C Racing team and driver Wayne Johnson were on a roll heading into Saturday’s “Fall Brawl” at I-80 Speedway near Greenwood, Nebraska. For much of the finale, it looked like the Oklahoma City driver had a shot at another big win. Unfortunately, he lost his brakes late in the going and suffered a DNF. The veteran will take this weekend off before the Lucas Oil ASCS National Series heads to Devil’s Bowl Speedway in Mesquite, Texas for the Winternationals October 14 and 15.
The busy format would see Wayne take the track five times. He started on the tail in eighth on the first of two heats. “We were able to get up to fifth there,” he says. “It was heavy early, so actually, we were pretty happy with that. We started the second heat on the pole on ended up winning that.”
Finishing in the top four in the first Dash of the night qualified him for another. “We ran second in the first Dash, which started us eighth in the second one,” says Wayne. “We gained a couple of spots, which meant we started sixth in the feature. That was a lot of races for us to just get to that point.”
Wayne would run a steady race and he picked up spots as the finale wore on. “We were really good as the race went on,” he says. “We were able to get up beside Terry (McCarl) and (Thomas Kennedy). We were three-wide for the lead there a little bit. We were running the bottom. From lap sixteen to twenty-five or so, we had the quickest car.”
The brake problem arose with a late yellow. “We really felt like we were going to get by those guys, and the caution came out,” says Wayne. “Riding around there under caution, I pushed the brake pedal and there were no brakes. We didn’t want to take any chances tearing up a car, so we just pulled in.”
The Maxim chassis has been working well for Wayne as of late. “It really sucked, because we were really good,” he says of the DNF. “We’ve been better on the long runs toward the end of the race. At Lucas Oil, it was the same thing. We struggled early with the fuel load, but when it came off, we got rolling.”
The team is excited about getting to Devil’s Bowl where they picked up a win in the spring. “We feel really good about how the car is working,” says Wayne. “We want to finish this year on a high note, and I’m really excited about next year. We’ve had our share of issues this year, but we’re at a point where we can really focus going forward.”
- administrator on Oct 05, 2016
- Article Date: 10/5/2016