Wednesdays with Wayne – Beaumont Beauty!
Wayne in Victory Lane at Beaumont (Ron Skinner Photo)
(Bill W) April 18, 2012 – Wayne Johnson has been on a roll, and he posted yet another win last Friday night at the Golden Triangle Raceway Park near Beaumont, Texas. The win was his fourth overall, and second of the season in Beaumont. This tally came against the Lucas Oil ASCS National Series. He added a third place finish on Saturday night at the Battlegrounds Speedway near Highlands, Texas as well.
Wayne finished second in his Beaumont heat after starting on the pole. “We got the jump on Tony Bruce there,” he says. “We got to running the bottom and I screwed up, and he beat me. It wasn’t the place to be running. I didn’t know. I just screwed up.”
Passing points yielded the twelfth starting spot in the feature. Wayne proceeded to tear to the front. “The car was just that good,” he says of the Wayne Johnson Racing #77x. “We were picking them off, one by one, taking our time. We were making it happen. We got to Tony in traffic. He was running up high, and I thought we had him. The caution came out, and it was for him. He broke a rear-end. We were passing him when the caution came out, so I didn’t see him at first.”
Though he thought he passed Bruce, the breakdown helped Wayne in the win. “Any way you can get it, you take it,” he says. “We started with the same setup we had a few weeks prior, but the racetrack was different. I just had to work on the thing a little, and tighten it up. We tried a few things, and it worked!”
On Saturday night in Highlands, Wayne drove from seventh to fourth in his heat. “We started in the back, and got lucky on the start,” he says. “We got by a couple cars. It was a heavy track in the heat with no passing. We got by (Seth) Bergman and into fourth. That put us starting tenth in the feature.”
Things started in hairy fashion. “We were so tight!” says Wayne. “There was a picture on the internet that showed us with all four wheels off the ground. I am headed for a crash. That was on the start of the feature. I bicycled up and was all the way in the back. Matt Covington and a bunch of guys crashed, so that bailed me out and I got my spot back.”
Wayne battled towards the front. “I had to change my line and do some things different being so tight,” he says. “We worked our way up and we were battling (Brad) Loyet for second. We had lapped a guy, and got into the back of us and turned us around. It smashed in the top wing, the rear bumper and the tail tank. It really didn’t hurt any components.”
Wayne’s string of top five finishes were in jeopardy. But he would make a charge from 17th to 3rd at the checkers! “We went to the work area and worked on the setup a bit,” he says. “We restarted in 17th with thirteen laps to go. And man, were we rolling! Another lap and we would have passed (Brady) Bacon (for second)!”
This Saturday, Wayne will make his first 410 start of the year at Knoxville Raceway. “We’re going to test some things with our shocks on Friday night,” he says. “I’m looking forward to running Knoxville’s opener on Saturday night.”
Category: Driver Updates, News, Wayne Johnson
