Published: Aug. 5, 2014
Prunty wins 2nd feature of season
Championship leader struggles
By NICHOLAS DETTMANN
Daily News
SLINGER — Dennis Prunty still wonders what might’ve been.
Prunty won his second super late model feature of the season
Sunday at Slinger Superspeedway, holding off Lowell Bennett on a restart with
14 laps to go in the 60lap event.
It was Prunty’s 24th career super late model victory,
fifthmost overall since 1998. His brother, David, is next on the list with 28.
“I wish it was the Nationals, but it isn’t,” Prunty said in
victory lane. “Things happen and that car’s been fast all year.”
Bennett finished second, followed by John DeAngelis, Jeff
Holtz and Braison Bennett to round out the top five. Taking second was a relief
for Lowell Bennett, the seven-time track champion.
“We went out in the first practice session and just had a
terrible vibration,” Lowell Bennett said. “Tip my hat to (the crew), they
worked so hard here this afternoon and got this thing back together.
“Then we go out to qualify and the thing is so loose after
we got rid of that vibration. We threw everything but the kitchen sink at it.”
Prunty led the final 42 laps of the race and was tough throughout
the day, which was similar to his dominating performance July 15 at Slinger
Nationals. But the dream of winning Nationals was halted 23 laps short from the
finish because of a faulty ignition wire.
“I was hoping it was something else because that’s something
I could’ve prevented,” Prunty said.
He and his crew went through everything they could think of
as they were preparing the car for that night. They just forgot one thing and
it cost them.
“I keep thinking why didn’t I just do that,” Prunty said.
“But you can only do so much.”
Championship points leader Steve Apel finished 12th and it
was a rough night for the defending track champion.
For the second week in a row, he got caught up in a
multi-car crash early in the feature. Later in the race, he was black flagged
for driving three-wide into a corner, which initiated a crash with 14 laps to
go. Three-wide racing is illegal at Slinger in the super late model division.
On July 27, Apel was caught in a first-lap multi-car crash,
but rallied for a third-place finish.
On lap 8, DeAngelis, while running in the top five, appeared
to lose a bit of the handle of his car coming out of Turn 4. At the same time,
Austin Luedtke, who was right behind DeAngelis, was tapped from behind by Rob
Braun, which sent Luedtke’s car sideways and mayhem ensued.
Dave McCardle got clipped in the rightrear quarter-panel and
shot straight into the outside wall, contact so hard his car lifted into the
air. Behind him, Dale Prunty went flying over the back of Braun’s car and into
the outside wall as well. In all, seven cars were involved in the crash,
including Conrad Morgan and Tommy Hromadka.
McCardle walked into the ambulance under his power. He was
checked and released. He said it was one of the hardest hits he’s had in his
career.
“We were just a victim,” Dale Prunty said.
“I just saw cars scatter,” Lowell Bennett said.
Dennis Prunty was behind McCardle when the crash began.
“I didn’t see what happened,” Prunty said. “I think two cars
made contact and I can’t tell you why because I wasn’t really watching them. I
was racing.
“I just cleared them.”
Even with Apel’s rough night, Lowell Bennett and Dennis
Prunty were only able to chip off 28 points of Apel’s lead in the points
standings with only four races left in the season for the super late model
division, five for the others. What helped Apel was he was the division’s fast
qualifier.
“I would think Steve would have to take off a week or two
for us to catch him,” Prunty said. “He has a pretty smooth lead.”
Bennett is second in points, 166 points behind Apel, while
Prunty is third, 171 behind Apel.
“You never know,” said Prunty, the 2012 track champion.
“With the way we’ve been running, I seem to get pretty good finishes and we
keep out of the wrecks, and we’re always there at the end. So, who knows? Maybe
we’ll keep finishing ahead of him. We’ll see what happens.”
It was a busy night for the safety crew at the track. After
the lap-8 melee, there were four cautions. In addition, only 10 of the 19 cars
that started finished the race.
Another crash took place in the Slinger Bees feature after
the super late model feature.
On lap 7, Slinger’s Jayden Buckley crashed hard into the
side of TJ Graczkowski’s car after he spun in Turn 4. It appeared Buckley
didn’t slow as she approached Graczkowski’s car. Buckley had to be cut out of
the car and put on a backboard as she was complaining of neck soreness. She was
awake and alert, and was transported to Aurora Medical Center in Hartford as
precaution. More information was not made available.
Despite the rough and costly night on the track, winning the
super late model feature was an uplifting moment for Prunty. However, it was a
small one.
“The car felt just as good as it did at the Nationals,”
Prunty said. “It was a good feeling. It just felt that good again.”
No comments:
Post a Comment