Steve Buckwalter Wins 50th ARDC Event
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ARDC
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STEVE BUCKWALTER RACES TO FIRST ARDC WIN OF THE SEASON
Steve Buckwalter made his first start of the 2015 season in American Racing Drivers Club (ARDC) competition when the wingless midgets of ARDC joined the wingless sprint cars of USAC at the Port Royal Speedway on Saturday night. After twenty laps of action, Buckwalter emerged with his first ARDC win of the year and the 50th of his career, tying him with six time ARDC Champion, Ray Bull in fourth on the All Time Feature Winners list.
Buckwalter was behind the wheel of the Mike Heffner owned, Lelands.com #27 midget. It was Heffner's third win of the season in midget competition with his third different driver. Danny Stratton picked up Heffner's first win on opening night and then Tim Buckwalter was the feature winner a few weeks later.
Polesitter, Jim Radney led the first six laps of the main event, leading the field with his Hyper Racing #95. Buckwalter sliced his way to the front from his eleventh place start quickly, running third behind Radney and 2015 feature winner, Brett Wanner with just five laps scored. Buckwalter completed the pass by Wanner for second just one lap later and set his sights on the leader, Radney. Buckwalter raced into the lead on lap seven.
At the half way mark, Steve Buckwalter led Radney and Wanner. Trevor Kobylarz had just moved up to fourth ahead of Ryan Greth.
With Buckwalter pulling away from the field, Kobylarz closed in on Radney to set up a challenge for second. As the leaders were coming through turns three and four to complete lap fifteen, Kobylarz set up a cross over move to move ahead of Radney for second but his R/T Racing #14 caught a rut in the track, sending Kobylarz into a spin. Wanner, who was racing in fourth at the time, at nowhere to go and made hard contact with Kobylarz. Wanner got upside down and the red flag was thrown while the safety crews headed to turn four.
Kobylarz had enough damage from the contact to send him to the pits but Wanner had his #44 back on its wheels and asked for a push truck. In the spirit of "never say die", Wanner rejoined the back of the field to complete the feature event.
It was all Steve Buckwalter to the checkered flag as he led Radney and Greth to the finish line. Bruce Buckwalter, Jr. made a late race run to take fourth over Steven Drevicki,
Kobylarz and Greth were the winners of the qualifying races.
Western PA swing is next on the ARDC schedule with Bedford on Friday, June 19th and Pittsburgh's PA Motor Speedway on Saturday, June 20th.
RACE NOTES
Trevor Kobylarz, Brett Arndt & Tony DiMattia all competing in Eastern Storm competition this week. DiMattia missed Port Royal event due to illness. Kobylarz lost several positions late in the USAC thirty lap main at Port Royal to finish 16th. Interesting side note was that Kobylarz turned a lap of 19.240 in time trials for the USAC sprints. While leading the heat with his wingless midget, Kobylarz was turning laps of 19.750. Now stop and think about that! Arndt did a fine job, missing a transfer spot on Saturday night by just one spot while driving the Biasi #1a with only a 360 under the hood. Arndt was up to fourth in the midget feature before catching a rut that unsettled the car, allowing several cars to get by.
FEATURE RESULTS (20 LAPS)
1. Steve Buckwalter, 2. Jim Radney, 3. Ryan Greth, 4. Bruce Buckwalter, Jr. 5. Steven Drevicki 6. Brett Arndt, 7. PJ Gargiulo, 8. Brett Wanner, 9. Trevor Kobylarz, 10. Nick Wean, 11. Shawn Jackson, 12. PJ Pavlich, 13. Jim Jackson, 14. Brian Gilmore, DNS - Mark Gilmore
