Lewis, Viebrock Dominate Renegade High Roller Sprint Action at ABC
by Nick Gima
Ashland, WI, June 7 – On a night that provided many challenges, Chris Lewis and Chase Viebrock seemed to be best suited to overcome as they sped off to their respective Renegade High Roller Series feature wins during the Series’ lone stop of the season at the ABC Raceway on Saturday.
The program, presented by the Bad River Lodge, Casino & Convention Center of Odanah, was hampered by light late-afternoon rains that lingered right up to and through the scheduled 7 pm start time, a lengthy track reclamation, and a long recovery effort for a scary flip during the Winged Sprint A-Main.
Lewis, of Grand Rapids, MN, has been on a tear as of late on the Traditional (non-winged) side of the Series, and he showed the power of his “Joker”-themed racer with an impressive come-from-behind win in that division’s 25-lap headliner. Lewis, who started inside on row 5 in the 13-car field, quickly moved through traffic and into third by lap 3, behind leader Bryan Roach and polestarter Johnny Parsons III.
Roach set a blistering pace on the smooth, wide, sticky-fast red-clay surface, leading by as much as 1.37 seconds during the early laps, while Parsons was pressured by Lewis, Jake Kouba and Cam Schafer. The uninterrupted pace allowed Roach to catch backmarkers well before mid-race, but the traffic got heavier as the run stayed under green, allowing Parsons and the rest to chip into the lead margin.
Lewis pulled off a daring “slide-job” pass of Parsons for second on lap 14, and within two more laps he had erased Roach’s edge, diving low to steal the lead on lap 16. “The Joker” then sped away to a cushion of well over a second before Edison Aldrich’s spin on lap 22 brought out the run’s only caution flag.
Over the three-lap dash to the finish Lewis flew to a huge 2.2-second final advantage and his second career win at ABC, with Roach holding off Schafer, Kouba and Parsons in a race that took less than ten minutes.
Viebrock, of New Richmond, started the Winged Sprint 25-lapper alongside polestarter Jamey Ogston in what promised to be a fast-paced start, as each ran away with his respective heat race earlier. Viebrock held up his end of that promise, obliterating the field over the first four laps by running off to a lead of nearly 2.3 seconds and already catching the tail-end of the running order when Brett Peterson’s spin brought some temporary order to the chaos.
On the restart Owen Carlson dove low to take third place away from Jack Berger, and within seven laps he overtook Ogston for second, as Viebrock once again established a healthy lead. However, as the leader quickly caught backmarkers again, Carlson eliminated Viebrock’s advantage and, on lap 14, used the heavy traffic to get by Viebrock for the lead.
Carlson expertly negotiated his way through the slower traffic while working the extreme outermost line around the three-eighths-mile oval, but on lap 18 he pushed too high in turn 3, caught the guardrail, and flipped up and over the rail and into the turn 4 catchfence in a frightening crash. A lengthy delay was needed to rescue his car from its landing spot, but Carlson had gotten out of the car on his own and was shaken up but otherwise uninjured.
Viebrock took over the duty of pacesetter for the final seven-lap run, and while not as dominant as he was earlier he did maintain a three-quarters-second lead to the finish, taking the checkers in heavy lapped traffic. Berger had taken third from Ogston just before the red-flag stop and stayed behind Viebrock to the finish, while Casey Lang and 14th-starting Keegan Coss completed the top five.
In the 20-lap Fuhrman Designs WISSOTA Modified main event, Justin Weinberger of Elk Mound earned his second feature win of the year here in dominant fashion. Starting outside on the front row, Weinberger took advantage of the wide, smooth racing surface created by the wide-tired sprint cars that ran prior, plus the green-to-checkered effort by the field, to go uncontested in a race that took just over seven minutes to complete.
In a race where it seemed that everyone in the field – except Weinberger – was equally fast, passing for position was at a premium despite the nearly-ideal track conditions. Weinberger hit his marks and increased his lead on nearly every lap, from a full second up on polestarter Tyler Vernon just three laps in, to 1.8 seconds ahead at mid-race.
Mike Anderson seemed to be the only driver able to move up in the running order during the run, working the higher line around the track to climb from his outside-fourth-row starting spot to third on lap 10, but by then he was well back of Vernon.
The win was the tenth of Weinberger’s career at Ashland, as he finished over two seconds ahead of Vernon, who in kind was 4.5 seconds ahead of Anderson. Tenth-starting Nick Oreskovich and Andrew Mackey finished fourth and fifth, respectively.
Ashland’s Steve Stuart was once again the class of the field in the Lightning Storm Graphics WISSOTA Super Stock feature, leading by almost a half-lap at the finish despite a handful of early caution flags keeping the field close.
Stuart, who started outside on row 4, was mired in a tight pack of at least a half-dozen cars during the early going, as front-row starter Trenton Bond snuck away to an impressive early advantage. Bond was up on second-running Jake Nevala by over three-quarters of a second by lap 4 when Jeff Eisner looped his ride to bring about the first yellow-flag stoppage, and another delay followed soon after when Jakob Bond spun as the field took the ensuing green. Stuart used his preferred outer line to sweep around several cars on that restart to take second, and he soon pulled alongside Bond and edged ahead at the stripe to complete lap 5, only to have his moves negated by a three-car get-together in turn 3.
With Stuart relegated to fourth on the restart, Dalton Truchon went around Nevala for second, and Stuart followed to take third on the next lap. Stuart then dove low to take second from Truchon on lap 7 and passed Trenton Bond the next time around to take the lead for good. From there Stuart put as much space between himself and the rest of the field as possible, and with the race continuing without stoppage that would be plenty, while the tight-knit bunch battling for second through seventh swapped positions with every lap, with lots of two- and three-wide action.
At the checkers Stuart was a full 6.7 seconds ahead for his 50th career win, surpassing Jule Wilcox for sixth on the track’s all-time feature win list, while Truchon took second ahead of a nice recovery by Eisner. Shawn McFadden edged Matt Deragon for fourth.
Three-time and defending track champion Marcus Dunbar led every one of the 20 laps to win his 11th career Dalbeck Sales WISSOTA Midwest Modified feature but first of the season. Dunbar beat polestarter and four-time Mid-Mod champ Paul Suzik through the first set of turns and was never bested from there despite several well-spaced cautions slowdowns.
After a complete restart for a two-car tangle on the initial start, Dunbar set the pace but couldn’t quite pull away from Suzik, George Dalbeck, Tad Schoonover and Vernon. Once Vernon took over fourth on lap 2, and James Vendela displaced Schoonover for fifth later in that lap, the lead five drew away from the rest of the field for their own dogfights for positions.
Rookie Cade Johnson, who had pulled into the infield with car issues on lap 4 while running at the tail of the field, crept his car too close to the racing surface on lap 6 to bring about the second stop of the race, and on that restart Vendela went around Dalbeck for fourth. On lap 11, with Dunbar and Vernon separating slightly from the others, Vendela worked the high side to get by Suzik, with Dalbeck in tow, and those two waged their own little battle a few short car-lengths behind the lead pair.
Sixth-running Schoonover was spun on lap 14 to bring out another yellow flag, and on that restart Dalbeck motored by Vernon for second. Dunbar finally put some space between himself and the field until lap 18, when Vendela spun to set up a green-white-checkered finish. Dalbeck and Vernon raced door-to-door over the final laps, allowing Dunbar to pull to a .83-second winning margin, while Dalbeck barely won the battle for second. Suzik followed in fourth, and Cory Jorgensen – the last starter on the 11-car grid – came through to fifth in the final sprint.
The WISSOTA Pure Stock feature was the final race run on the program, and the hearty fans that stuck around were treated to one of the best races of the season, with Aaron Bernick of Duluth, MN, edging George Richards by less than a tenth of a second for his first win of the year and fourth of his career at ABC.
Neither Bernick nor Richards would have been in position for the photo finish if not for two caution flags very late in the ten-lap run. Visiting Jake Smith got the better of polestarter Eric Crosby at the initial drop of the green and pulled to a full-second lead as Crosby raced side-by-side with Bernick, with Richards running door-to-door with Shane Basina for fourth. The front-runners stayed in this formation until lap 7 of the ten scheduled, when Zene Anderson spun.
Bernick got a run on Smith on the ensuing restart and edged ahead, but Anderson’s slowed ride in the middle of the back straight just ahead of the leaders made for a very tense moment, as everyone swerved and dodged to avoid the nearly-stopped car. Bernick led the field to the green-white-checkered restart, and in the tight pack of cars Smith went to the high side and Richards dove low to surround the leader in a three-wide formation coming out of the final turn. Bernick kept his car’s nose ahead of the others for the win, with Richards on one side for second and Smith just a bit further back on the other side for third. Crosby was on Bernick’s rear bumper for fourth, and rookie visitor Dnae Rose trailed at a distance in fifth.
Although Basina’s Pure Stock failed him in that feature, he won his third Berglund Customs ABC Six-Cylinder feature win in a row in the event just before, leading every lap but one.
Dale Coddington started outside on the front row and pulled ahead of rookie Tyler Gervais for the initial lead, with Basina and Travis Swanson following to second and third. During lap 2 Basina used an inside drive to take over the lead, and with the race running its15 laps without a slowdown the two-time defending division champ gradually built a solid advantage.
By lap 4 Roger Walker had joined Coddington and Swanson in an entertaining battle for second, and on lap 8 Walker passed Swanson for third. But two laps later Walker’s car slowed significantly and he pulled into the pits.
Basina caught backmarkers with three laps to go, allowing Coddington to cut into the leader’s 1.9-second cushion, but Basina still cruised to his 13th career win here. Swanson came home a distant third but still well ahead of Cody Eichmann and Cameron Bond, in a race that took less than six minutes to run.
Viebrock set a new track single-lap record for Renegade Winged Sprints at 14.258 seconds (94.684 mph), besting Jeremy Snow’s previous track record of a year ago by two-tenths of a second, while Lewis’ quickest lap of 15.455 seconds (87.350 mph) was a half-second shy of Schafer’s non-winged record mark from a year ago.
Also setting Basina Racing fast-lap times in their respective features were Weinberger in the Modifieds (16.424; 82.197), Stuart in the Super Stocks (17.127; 78.823), Dunbar in the Mid-Mods (16.970; 79.552), Richards in the Pure Stocks (18.954; 71.225), and Basina in the Sixes (18.672; 72.301).
The ABC Raceway will take next Saturday night, June 14, off but will return to action on Saturday, June 21, with the third annual Mountain Dew “Six-Cylinder Slam,” presented by North Star Beverages of Hurley. The unique-to-ABC division will run two points-paying features, with a blind-draw invert from the finishing order of the first feature determining the starting line-up for the second race. The top finishers in overall points for the night will earn bonuses.
The grandstand and pit gates will open at 5 pm, hot laps will start at 6:30, and heat-race action is scheduled for 7 pm. The ABC Raceway is located 3-1/2 miles south of Ashland on State Highway 13 and one mile west on Butterworth Road. For raceday information call (715) 682-4990, log on to the track’s website, www.abcraceway.com, or check out its FaceBook page.
Results
Fuhrman Designs WISSOTA Modifieds
Feature: 1-10: Justin Weinberger, Elk Mound; Tyler Vernon, Mason; Mike Anderson, Jim Falls; Nick Oreskovich, Mason; Andrew Mackey, Duluth, MN; Pat Cook, Washburn; Brady Uotinen, Superior; Al Uotinen, Superior; Neil Balduc, Bessemer, MI; Marcus Dunbar, Marenisco, MI.
11-15: Brandon Copp, Brule; Jake Hiatt, Mason; Cody Carlson, Superior; Cole Spacek, Phillips; Jeff Spacek, Phillips.
Heat 1: Weinberger; Mackey; Cook; A Uotinen; Dunbar; Carlson; J Spacek; C Spacek.
Heat 2: Anderson; Balduc; Vernon; B Uotinen; Oreskovich; Hiatt; Copp.
Lightning Storm Graphics WISSOTA Super Stocks
Feature: 1-10: Steve Stuart, Ashland; Dalton Truchon, Washburn; Jeff Eisner Jr, Merrill; Shawn McFadden, Ashland; Matt Deragon, Ashland; Trenton Bond, Iron River; Jake Nevala, Ashland; Jakob Bond, Mason; Rita Anderson, South Range; Patrick Beeksma, Ironwood, MI.
11-12: Don Livingston, Washburn; Terran Spacek, Phillips.
Heat 1: Stuart; Nevala; Spacek; McFadden; Eisner; J Bond.
Heat 2: Truchon; T Bond; Deragon; Livingston; Beeksma; Anderson.
Dalbeck Sales WISSOTA Midwest Modifieds
Feature: 1-10: Marcus Dunbar, Marenisco, MI; George Dalbeck, Wakefield, MI; Tyler Vernon, Mason; Paul Suzik, Ironwood, MI; Cory Jorgensen, Hermantown, MN; Tanner Hicks, Ashland; Tad Schoonover, Eagle River; Bryan Lund, Ashland; James Vendela, South Range; Ryan Barningham, Bayfield.
11: Cade Johnson, Iron, MN.
Heat 1: Vernon; Dunbar; Schoonover; Johnson; Barningham; Jorgensen.
Heat 2: Dalbeck; Vendela; Hicks; Suzik; Lund.
WISSOTA Pure Stocks
Feature: 1-9: Aaron Bernick, Duluth, MN; George Richards, Mondovi; Jake Smith, Cohasset, MN; Eric Crosby, Amery; Dnae Rose, Gordon; Dylan Helget, South Range; Ryan LaBorde, South Range; Shane Basina, Bayfield; Zene Anderson, Superior.
Heat: Smith; Crosby; Richards; Basina; Bernick; Helget; Anderson; Rose; LaBorde.
Berglund Customs ABC Six-Cylinders
Feature: 1-10: Shane Basina, Bayfield; Dale Coddington, Hayward; Travis Swanson, Ashland; Cody Eichmann, Park Falls; Cameron Bond, Mason; Alex Bond, Iron River; Tyler Gervais, Ashland; Mady Anderson, Mason; Jim Anderson, Cable; Roger Walker, Phillips.
11: Mathew Rohlfing, Grand View.
Heat 1: Walker; Basina; Swanson; Eichmann; Rohlfing; J Anderson.
Heat 2: C Bond; Coddington; A Bond; Gervais; M Anderson.
Renegades High Roller Series Traditional Sprints
Feature: 1-10: Chris Lewis, Grand Rapids, MN; Bryan Roach, Goodhue, MN; Cam Schafer, Forest Lake, MN; Jake Kouba, Farmington, MN; Johnny Parsons III, Owatonna, MN; Westen Johnson, Clayton; Dan Atchison, Oak Grove, MN; Zach Widdes, Rice Lake; Josh Braford, Grand Rapids, MN; Scott Brandt, Andover, MN.
11-12: Kierston Coss, Menmonie; Jori Hughes, Redondo Beach, CA.
Heat 1: Parsons; Roach; Schafer; Hughes; Lewis; Atchison.
Heat 2: Kouba; Brandt; Coss; Johnson; Braford; Edison Aldrich, Osceola; Widdes.
Renegades High Roller Series Winged Sprints
Feature: 1-10: Chase Viebrock, New Richmond; Jack Berger, Lake Elmo, MN; Jamey Ogston, Hermantown, MN; Casey Lang, Linwood, MN; Keegan Coss, Menomonie; Brett Peterson, Amery; Todd Hansen, Shoreview, MN; Mike Stien, Ceylon, MN; John Vaillancourt, Faribault, MN; Jeremy Snow, Princeton, MN.
11-19: Jamie Reberg, St Stephens, MN; Kevin Bradwell, Luck; Jeremy Schultz, Stewart, MN; Carl Wade, Dexter, MN; Carl Brunsvold, Stanley; Josh Braford, Grand Rapids, MN; Matthew Weber, Cushing; Mitch Hagen, Cottage Grove, MN; Owen Carlson, Somerset.
Heat 1: Ogston; Vaillancourt; Berger; Bradwell; Schultz; Snow; Stien; Reberg; Weber; Braford.
Heat 2: Viebrock; Lang; Carlson; Peterson; Hansen; Wade; Coss; Hagen; Brunsvold.
