Courtney Captures Kutztown Eastern Midget Week Opener
Kutztown, Pennsylvania (August 5, 2020)………Tyler Courtney and Clauson-Marshall Racing turned around a little bit of misfortune from earlier in the night into good fortune in Wednesday night’s Eastern Midget Week opener at Kutztown, Pa.’s Action Track USA.
Following Courtney’s first qualifying lap, a coil went south, preventing him from recording a second lap. However, that first lap and Courtney’s subsequent third-place finish in his heat, provided him a view from the outside of the front row for the 30-lap feature where the Indianapolis, Ind. native led wire-to-wire for his third USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget victory in his last four starts.
The victory was the second consecutive triumph in as many starts for CMR at Action Track USA quarter-mile following Zeb Wise’s triumph in the 2019 debut.
“We had a rough couple of months there on the midget side of things,” Courtney admitted. “But here in the last couple of weeks, we’ve kind of turned things back on and found some things that I think we can keep building onto and, hopefully, keep getting these wins and knocking them off.”
“I just reset mentally, I think we all did as a team,” Courtney continued. “We just hit the reset button and put the first couple of months of the midget season behind us and focused on the second half of the season. We’ve got a really good racecar now and we just got to ride this high as long as we can.”
Not that there was anything he needed to be ashamed of prior to his recent streak of success, but following 21st and 22nd place finishes at Kokomo, Ind. and Fairbury, Neb. in late June/mid-July, the defending series champ stood fourth in the standings, 124 points behind point leader Chris Windom. Now with three wins and a runner-up finish in his last four races, Courtney’s chopped 50 points off his deficit and is now second in the standings.
After seeing his one-year-old Action Track USA one-lap record fall by the wayside to Tanner Thorson in Fatheadz Eyewear qualifying earlier in the night, Courtney found salvage by instantly racing to the lead on the opening lap past pole sitter Robert Dalby. Courtney constructed his advantage to over a second as a scramble for the second position behind him consumed the likes of Dalby, Buddy Kofoid, Justin Grant, Tanner Thorson and others.
Kevin Woody Jr., who has served in a role as an armed government bodyguard, spun in turn one just in front of the head of the pack to bring out the race’s first caution on the ninth lap. Courtney drifted high to avoid the spinning Woody and avoided contact between he and the outside wall.
With the caution resetting track position just prior to encroaching lapped traffic, Courtney resumed his prowess at the front, jumping away from the field at the drop of the green. Second-running Robert Dalby clipped the turn four wall nearly a lap following the lap nine restart, allowing a succession of Kofoid, Grant and Thorson to freight-train under Dalby for the second position, relegating Dalby, the reigning USAC Western States Midget champion, to 5th.
A lap 14 stoppage for a turn two tangle between series point leader Chris Windom (13th), Dillon Welch (15th) and Kevin Thomas Jr. (17th), brought out the following caution just as Courtney was within shouting distance of the tail end of the field, thus keeping him out of the throes of traffic for a just a little while longer.
Windom restarted after repairs in the work area under caution while Welch restarted as well and Kevin Thomas Jr., in his debut for Heffner Racing Enterprises, endured the ending to a trying night with heavy right front damage putting an end to his race. In the final tally, Windom finished 13th, Welch 17th and Thomas 21st.
Courtney was once again gonzo on the restart of lap 14, leaving the most ferocious battle to those in his distant past as Thorson went 4th to 3rd shortly thereafter, then waged in a back and forth battle of sliders with Kofoid before securing the second position on the 19th circuit.
Christopher Bell, the 2013 USAC National Midget champion, momentarily pulled off a double slider of both Thorson and Kofoid in turn one on the 20th lap before slotting into third behind Thorson. Two laps later, Kofoid was out of the picture of contention when contact between he and Grant for the fourth position sent Kofoid through an agricultural racing experience through the infield, staying on the gas and rejoining the action midway down the front straightaway, now slotted in 7th.
Though Courtney finally did find himself amidst traffic throughout the final five laps, he expertly navigated through with relative ease to pick up a commanding 3.385 second victory over Thorson, Bell, Grant and Cannon McIntosh. For Courtney, the win marked the 17th of his career, tying himself with Jay Drake, Tanner Thorson and J.J. Yeley on USAC’s all-time National Midget win list aboard his Clauson-Marshall Racing/NOS Turbo – ZMax/Spike/Stanton SR-11x.
Thorson (Minden, Nev.) recorded a solid runner-up finish in his Hayward Motorsports/Oilfire – Factory Kahne – Walker Filtration/Spike/Stanton SR-11x. Although he didn’t quite have enough at the end to make a run on Courtney on this particular night, he acknowledged what a solid run it was despite having a minor setback.
“Once I got into second, I tried to run (Courtney) back down but I had nothing,” Thorson recalled. “I hate excuses, but I had no front shock cables there. The steering wheel hit the clips out of them so I couldn’t really turn them. My guys did an awesome job getting this car ready for me.”
Christopher Bell made his one-stop of the Eastern Midget Week tour a good one, finishing 3rd in his first USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget start of 2020 in a four-car team effort for Tucker-Boat Motorsports alongside Windom, Welch and Andrew Layser, his being the Pristine Auction – Toyota – K & C Drywall/Spike/Speedway Toyota.
(Rich Forman Photo)