Kerry Madsen – Back in the Midwest!
(Bill W) May 29, 2013 – The trip to the East is over for the Keneric Racing #29 team, and the tow back to the Midwest started with a good sixth place run at the Lawrenceburg Speedway in Indiana last night. This weekend, the World of Outlaws and driver Kerry Madsen head to Ohio’s Attica Speedway on Friday night, and the I-96 Speedway in Lake Odessa, Michigan on Saturday.
Kerry claimed the sixth fastest time of the night last night in qualifying at Lawrenceburg. He raced from row two to second in his heat. That qualified him for the Dash, where he advanced from fifth to fourth. “The car felt good in qualifying, the heat and the Dash,” he says. “We had such a good car, that we left it alone for the feature.”
Starting fourth in the feature, Kerry rode the high banks to a sixth place finish. “We just didn’t quite get the car where we needed it in the A main,” he says. “We were able to get a good result. It was good, especially with how the previous week went for us. I think if I could have done a little better job on the restarts, we would have been in the top five.”
The week started for the St. Mary’s, New South Wales native at New Egypt Speedway in New Jersey last Wednesday. “I just made some bad laps in qualifying there,” says Kerry. “I was on the wrong part of the racetrack. It’s as simple as that.”
That got him behind the 8-ball. It was the same story at the Dirt Track in Charlotte, North Carolina on Friday, but this time, he was able to climb into the feature. “We didn’t have the best car in qualifying,” admits Kerry. “Then it laid rubber at the end of qualifying, so that didn’t help either. We just weren’t good enough.”
Things got better until an incident on the track resulted in a feature DNF. “We kept working on our car, and I think we would have gotten something out of it in the A main,” says Kerry. “We were spun out two laps in. That bent the rear axle, so we really couldn’t continue.”
The team is motivated after their finish at Lawrenceburg followed similar recent runs in the Midwest. “We feel like we’re on top of things,” says Kerry. “With Eldora, Elko and Knoxville, we felt we had turned the corner. We have Attica on Friday and I-96 on Saturday.”
Attica is always a tough stop for the Outlaws. “There are always a lot of good cars at Attica,” says Kerry. “It’s one of those tracks that the locals run well with us. It tends to be ‘draw sensitive’ with qualifying. It’s going to be a battle.”
The struggles out east weren’t immune to the Keneric team. “Right now, if you go around the pit area, you hear teams going through the same things we were,” says Kerry. “It seems two guys are on top of it, and the rest of us are shaking our heads a bit, but we’ll get there. By the end of the night, we’ve got a fast racecar. We just need to get ourselves in position to win in qualifying. That’s when more wins will come.”
Category: Driver Updates, Kerry Madsen
