Bartels grabs late model win at Bakersfield
Nick Bartels didn’t care that the low line was the preferred way around Bakersfield Speedway on Saturday night.
Bartels found the middle of the track more to his liking and used that route to perfection in winning the 30-lap Late Model feature.
The El Segundo driver powered around Robert Sanders on the outside for the lead on Lap 10 and then pulled away for his first win this year on the third-mile clay oval.
“He may have been a little faster, but that’s the downside of starting in the front; he couldn’t see that the middle was working a little bit better in the beginning,” Bartels said. “Towards the end it felt it was a little marbly in the middle. I don’t know if it was just me messing up or the cars kicking off the dust off the infield.”
Sanders held on to finish second. Clay Daly was third, Steve Drake fourth and Cody Laney fifth.
Earlier in the evening, Tony Toste of Pismo won the four-lap Super Late Model Trophy Dash.
Traci Childress took advantage of Wade Eurto’s misfortune to win the 20-lap American Stock feature.
Eurto led the first 14 laps. However, Don Mead, running second, hooked and spun Eurto in turn one moments after a lap 15 restart.
Mead was relegated to the back of the field by track officials because of the incident while Childress inherited the lead.
Once up front Childress pulled away.
“Finally, I’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Childress said after her first A-main victory of the year.
Eurto recovered from the spin and took second place.
Points leader Brian Childress rallied from ninth on the starting grid to finish third. Mead was fourth and Tyler Johnson was fifth.
Jon Isabella of Santee dominated the 20-lap CDCRA A-main event, leading from start to finish.
Isabella, a 2001 and 2003 Legends champion, stayed glued to the bottom of the track the entire race and none of his challengers were able to mount enough of a run to pass him.
“Just drove it like it was an asphalt track,” Isabella said. “It was nice.”
Jonathan Henry was second, followed by Angel Figueroa, Dave Cantu, and LJ Billings.
A starting position near the back of the field for the 20-lap Mod Lite feature couldn’t keep Zach Forster out of Victory Lane. Forster raced his way up from 11th place out of 13 cars when the green flag dropped to win his fifth straight A-main win this year.
Karson Sylvester, 14, led a race-high 10 laps and finished second and was followed by Jeff Thompson, Jeff Fry and Nick Spainhoward in the top five.
“I’ve been racing for 20 years and I’ve won a lot of races in my day,” Forster said. “If these kids can come up and run and beat me I’ll be so privileged to race with them and hope that I can teach them something because I’m just an old fat guy.”
Mason Ratcliff & Jakob Carey each won their respective Mini Dwarf class main events.
