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(Bill W) May 23, 2011 – After getting one show in the last two weekends, Brian Brown will try to make up for it by competing five straight nights this Memorial Day weekend. A third place finish at Jacksonville Speedway with the Monster Energy™ Sprint Car Series last Friday, will be followed by runs at I-80 Speedway Thursday, the Junction Motor Speedway on Friday, The Great American Dirt Track Saturday and Sunday in Jetmore, Kansas and the 81 Speedway on Monday.
Brian raced for the second time this year with the Monster Series on Friday in Jacksonville. Starting tenth in his heat, he made a last corner move to inch ahead for fifth. That would give him enough passing points to make the six-car dash. “You really don’t have a choice but to pass as many cars as you can when you draw that bad in your heat,” he says. “It took three or four times to get going, and then I hit the backstretch wall and bent the Jacob ’s ladder. That made it more of a handful then it should have been. We were able to get fifth three by a couple of inches, and these races can be a game of inches sometimes. We were just happy to be able to get to the dash.”
The dash saw little passing, and the Grain Valley, Missouri driver finished where he started. “As the night went on, the track got rougher,” he says. “They’ve reconfigured that track so it’s harder to run the top as much as you used to. It was right around the bottom in the dash. We stayed third, and you don’t come to win the dash, you come to win the A.”
The FVP #21 team made some changes for the main event. “We had been running thirteen inches of stagger all night long,” says Brian of the setup for the banked ¼ mile. “We made the decision to go down to around eight inches for the feature. My thought was, with the holes and the bouncing around, I would be able to do what Terry (McCarl) did, and run the top a little bit. We just were too tight to get rotated in the corners, and when I did, it was pushing towards the fence and not straight. We just missed it.”
Early, Brian found his way to second behind, leader Jimmy Hurley. “I felt when we got to second, Jimmy was a little better than us,” he says. “I just figured I could make something happen in traffic. There were so many yellows that we just never got there.”
Eventual winner, Terry McCarl, found his way by on a restart. “Honestly, he probably had the fastest car, and he deserved to win,” says Brian of Terry. “It was encouraging for me just finishing. I had been to Jacksonville six times prior, and never finished a race there. Somewhere along the line, we knocked the Jacob’s ladder off again, but it was good to finish towards the front and be close for next time.”
It will be back to 360 racing, as ASCS-Midwest shows loom at the I-80 Speedway near Greenwood, Nebraska on Thursday and the Junction Motor Speedway near McCool Junction, Nebraska on Friday. “Those two tracks, especially I-80, are right up there with Knoxville as my favorite tracks,” says Brian. “ We’ve had good success there, and hopefully, Thursday won’t be any different. The Kosiski brothers always have the track in good shape and we have our hard hitting Searsboro Telephone Company motor.”
It’s on to the Third Annual Steve King Memorial Saturday and Sunday night in Jetmore, Kansas under ASCS-Sooner/NCRA sanction. “The two shows are $3,000 to win each night, and they’re also giving a $2,000 bonus to the high point getter for both nights,” says Brian. “Steve King was always a tough competitor, and I know he meant a great deal to the community of Jetmore. I’m looking forward to getting out there and being a part of the weekend.”
It’s not lost on Brian that he will miss his first weekly show at Knoxville Raceway in several years on Saturday. “It will be bittersweet,” he says. “I think you’ll have to go back to 2005 or 2006 since I’ve missed a show there. The fans there are the best, and we’ll sure be keeping up on what’s going on there. This year is a little different. We’re looking forward to running some different races and getting FVP some exposure at different venues.”
The weekend will be completed on Monday with a NCRA event at 81 Speedway near Wichita, Kansas on the way home. “We’ve always run well in Wichita,” says Brian. “Hopefully, the track will be in good shape. The last couple times we’ve been here it has laid rubber. I’m hoping they work on that. It’s kind of like the old days where you hit the road like this weekend. We’ve been putting the work in the shop. My Grandpa (George Lasoski), Andy (Korte), Chaddy (Cypart) and myself have been working hard, not only on my car, but on Justyn’s (Cox). We want to go get some wins.”
Hopefully, Mother Nature stays away. “We’ll forgive her for the last couple of weeks, if she gives us our five shows this weekend,” says Brian.
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