Wednesdays with Wayne – Three Race Week Starts Tonight!
(Bill W) April 16, 2014 – The Wayne Johnson Racing #77x team is looking forward to a three-race week in both Iowa and Texas, starting tonight with the Sprint Invaders at the Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa, Iowa. Wayne will also be in attendance at the Devil’s Bowl Speedway for this weekend’s historic return of the World of Outlaws. The Knoxville, Iowa driver showed speed in a pair of MOWA events last weekend.
On Friday, at Jacksonville Speedway, things started well with a second place heat run and a Dash win on the banked ¼-mile oval. “It was kind of one-lane all night for us,” says Wayne. “After the heat, we were able to draw the pole for the Dash. The car was pretty good there and we were able to win it.”
Starting on the pole for the feature, the first start went well, but it was called back. “I thought the start would be everything, because the track was so narrow,” says Wayne. “We were able to get the jump on Jerrod (Hull) there, but there was a crash on the first lap.
There was a fifteen or twenty minute delay, and the track was a lot drier on the bottom on the restart. I spun the tires, and Jerrod got the jump on me. Maybe I just overthought it a little bit too.”
Wayne tried to run down the leader. “We were running pretty well there in second,” he says. “We were about halfway through the race waiting our turn. There just weren’t a lot of opportunities to pass. We got to him in traffic, but we couldn’t get by him.”
Unfortunately, the race took a turn for the worse, resulting in a DNF. “I was running around the top there to try and move around a little bit,” says Wayne. “I got pretty high and the car was loose, and that’s when (Kevin) Swindell slid me. I had to check up, and the car dug up the cushion. I ripped all the radiator components out, and it knocked the line out of the oil tank, so we were done.”
A stout 33-car field gathered Saturday for the MOWA show at 34 Raceway in West Burlington, Iowa. Wayne timed in seventh. “I thought we were decent qualifying,” he says. “I think the racetrack picked up. A lot of the quicker times came later on. It wasn’t horrible. We were just a few tenths off of (Terry) McCarl, and he’s really fast right now.”
Wayne would transfer to the Dash after advancing from row two to finish second in his heat. “We were free a little bit in the heat,” he says. “We fell back to sixth in the Dash right away (after starting fifth). We maintained and we were able to get by Bronson (Maeschen) for fifth there at the end.”
He lined up inside row three for the 30-lap main event. “We changed a lot,” says Wayne. “We tightened the car up quite a bit. At the start of the feature, we got to third right away, and I felt like we were picking up on (Craig) Dollansky. The caution came out about seven or eight laps in, and on the restart, I screwed up. I jumped the cushion in three and four, and let (Josh) Schneiderman get a run on me off of four. We were side by side down the front straight. I needed to be on the bottom, but I ran the top.”
With the preferred line the bottom of turns one and two, Wayne lost some ground. “I was able to stay side by side with (Schneiderman) for a lap,” he says. “I hung around up top a couple of laps and before you know it, I was back in eighth or ninth. I finally muscled my way back to the bottom and ended up passing a couple cars to finish seventh.”
Still, the car was strong and a step in the right direction heading into tonight’s action in Oskaloosa. “I felt like we had a top three car both nights,” says Wayne. “The driver just screwed up. Our car is still better early than late, but we’re getting closer with that. Every time out, we’ve been a little better. I’m ‘bumfuzzled’ on these tires though.”
Category: Driver Updates, Wayne Johnson
