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(Bill W) June 14, 2010 – With the World of Outlaws “Kasey’s King of Sedalia” event running on Wednesday night, Grain Valley, Missouri sprint car driver, Brian Brown, hopes to be “King for a Night”. The driver of the FVP #21 has plenty of experience in Victory Lane at the Missouri State Fair Speedway ½ mile oval in Sedalia, but this would be the biggest one of all.
Brian’s last event against the World of Outlaws came at Knoxville Raceway on June 4, and he finished second in an inverted feature. “This is probably the most that I have looked forward to an Outlaw show at Sedalia,” he admits. “After we ran so well with the Outlaws at Knoxville, I’m really looking forward to it at another one of our home tracks.”
To be good with the Outlaws, it is the two laps when no one else is on the track that can mean so much. “We’re going to do everything in our power to get the car right,” says Brian. “You need to qualify well. That’s such a key. After that, I think we have more laps than about all of them, and hopefully, we’re in position to show that.”
Last weekend, the Eagle Nationals at the Eagle Raceway in Nebraska played host to the Lucas Oil ASCS National Series. Weather threatened, and though they got the events in on Friday and Saturday, Mother Nature still played a part with track conditions. “They just had a ton of rain prior to the event,” says Brian of Friday’s preliminary. “Then they put a lot of water on it. It was one of those deals that made for a narrow and choppy track that didn’t lend to very good racing.”
Brian started at the back of his heat and finished sixth on Friday. The program was rushed along because of impending weather, and there was no time to correct a mechanical break to make the B main. “We had a hole knocked out of the radiator,” he says. “It was a deal where we had to switch it out, and we just didn’t have time to get it done. All in all, it probably wasn’t a bad thing. The A main had a couple of guys hauled off to the hospital and a lot of equipment destroyed. Thankfully, no one was injured too badly.”
The track conditions were much better on Saturday, and Brian participated in an exciting heat race, starting fifth and running third at the checkers. “I think they realized their issues from Friday night and made the track racy on Saturday,” he says. “If the fans didn’t love our heat on Saturday, I don’t know if they are really fans. At one point I was second, and at another sixth. On the white flag, I could have ran anywhere from second to sixth, and we were lucky enough to finish third.”
Brian started inside row eight of the feature. “We were able to climb up to eighth at one point,” he says. “We got in behind another car, and lost some ground back to twelfth by the end. We missed on the car a bit. We thought the track would blow off a little more than it did. It was a little tight, and we’ll chalk it up to a bad decision.”
After the WoO event at Sedalia, Brian is looking forward to returning to Knoxville Raceway on Saturday after a rainout there last weekend. Friday plans are undecided.
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