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KANSAS CITY, KS (May 13, 2011) - The week leading up to Friday night's Seeburg Mufflers Night At The Races at Lakeside Speedway looked promising. Rain had dropped all over the area except at Lakeside Speedway. As other area tracks were canceling their shows, Lakeside was getting prepared for their event. Friday the 13th comes every year and it seems like and you can always bank on something weird happening and tonight was no different. The show was called about 9:30 p.m. in the middle of the Grand National Feature as the lights went out for the last time. Lakeside Speedway owner, Marc Olson, new early on that he was having a problem with his lights and got a local electrician on the job. A temporary fix was found, as 3/4 of the speedway lights came back on. The last outage forced Olson to postpone the Modified feature until next week. Before the lights went out Lakeside Speedway made it through 2 and a half features before succumbing to the lighting problem. It was just a week ago that Marshall Jewett lost a heart breaker in the Factory Stock feature. Jewett wasn't going to see this happen again this week as he drove to a runaway win. "We finally got up front and was running outside, and we got up front and finally I went down to the bottom and I got to the front so I said that bottom is the place to be, then I guess we walked away from them," said Jewett . Jewett raced to the front from his 7th starting spot in the feature and used the bottom of the track to run away from the field. Not only was the setup and driver combo working for Jewett, close racing from 2nd on back was allowing him to run away from the competition. After a championship season last year, Jewett feels like he is on the right track. "Oh, we tweaked a little bit. It's the same motor, same car, you know the same everything, we just keep tweaking it week to week," said Jewett. "It feels great. We just missed it last week and we were so close," said Jewett, "Man, that was such a heartbreaker and to come back and be able to win tonight was great." Some familiar faces made up the top 5 once again. Scotty Moore, a former feature winner in 2011, finished in the runner-up spot after leading for a little while, 3rd was another former feature winner, Brett Heeter, 4th went to Caleb Mcclellan and rounding out the top 5 was last week's winner, Jay Barnes. The B Mod feature looked to be in the hands of Bobby Russ Wood, but then again, looks can be deceiving. Wood led for 14 of the 15 laps in the feature event. Coming to the white flag, he thought the white flag was the yellow flag. In thinking this he slowed on the speedway. Wood slowed up just enough for Gene Claxton to pass him and take his 2nd win of the 2011 season. Claxton becomes the first repeat winner of the year, in any class. "I think we might have been a second place car but Russ Wood was leading it and coming down to the white, he has a yellow tinted shield on his helmet and he thought it was the yellow and he backed off," said Claxton. That moment was all Claxton needed to work his magic and take the win. It was an outstanding win, considering that Claxton's car didn't look like it was handling all that well. Sometimes driving ability helps out tremendously. "The two barrel motors, you just don't have a lot of power, but when it's slick it's not too bad because you can free it up," said Claxton, " just trying to free it up is a big challenge." While Claxton tries to get his car figured out, it could be a message to other Convertible Sport Mod drivers that the class just might be getting a little tougher in the near future. It was Mike Tanner taking home another 2nd place finish, Wood would finish in the 3rd spot following his mistake, 4th went to Ben Kates and moving from 10th to 5th in the A was Mike Higley. The Grand National feature was on the track as the lights went out. Since the halfway point of the race had been reached, Lakeside Speedway officials decided to call the race complete. This meant Tim Billings would get the win and he became the 14th different feature winner out of 15 feature races. Tim Billings would, probably, not have been denied on this night . The former track champ enjoyed a huge lead before getting the news that the race was going to be called. Last week's winner, Mike Ryun, finished 2nd, 3rd would be Tim Shields, Luke Nieman had another good run finishing 4th and Mike Taylor Jr., the week #2 winner, finished in the 5th position. Since the Grand National race was deemed complete, the fans would not need to retain their ticket stubs for any other issues. The races were past the half way point and 3 of the 4 features were complete. Next weekend you will need to get a new admission into Lakeside. The Modifieds will run their feature from tonight and then they will get started with their normal Friday night event'. Next week the spectator gates open up at 5 p.m., hot laps are scheduled for 7 p.m. and the first race goes green at 7:30 p.m. Adult tickets are $12, kids 8 to 14 are $6 and kids 7 and under are always free at Lakeside Speedway. For more information about Lakeside Speedway, visit them on the web at
www.lakesidespeedway.net .
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