Clark fights off pack for first win

Bryan Clark’s long-awaited first trip to Victory Lane at Bakersfield Speedway didn’t come without a hard-fought battle.
Clark had to fight off a strong challenge from Rick Childress, Jr. in order to win the 25-lap IMCA Modified feature on the third-mile, clay oval.
Clark led the entire way despite several strong attempts to take over the top spot by Childress during the late stages of the race.
Childress edged ahead of Clark coming into turn four on more than one occasion during the closing laps, but couldn’t ever beat Clark, who had the momentum running the high line, to the flag stand.
“I feel great, that’s my first one (win) ever,” Clark said.
Clark’s margin of victory over Childress was .760 seconds. Logan Drake finished third. Steve Noland was fourth and Roger Holder placed fifth.
Saturday night was the unveiling of several new precautionary measures implemented by the track in order to improve driver safety following last week’s fiery crash involving Austin Manzella and Gary Dutton during the SportMod feature race.
“We’ve added a new piece of fire-fighting equipment, a truck with a pump and a tank and some more fire-foam,” Bakersfield Speedway owner Scott Schweitzer said. “We had a mechanical failure with the smaller system so we’ve added another…We have a full-time guy that’s in three-layer Nomex, head-to-toe, that just stays in that vehicle and is able to head out to any incidents that occur on the track.”
According to Schweitzer the track also made all of its fire extinguishers and water extinguishers more visible to drivers and track workers by attaching them to newly built brackets placed up higher on the k-rails.
Along with those changes, Schweitzer said that this past week track workers were given additional training in how to handle situations like the one that occurred when both Manzella and Dutton were forced to escape quickly from burning cars.
“That was a freak deal,” Schweitzer said. “Obviously every night we’re concerned about the drivers, crew, and fans that come in here. We learn every night. We’re thankful that nothing happened to the drivers and they were able to get out. It did shine some awareness on some things that we were able to polish and fine-tune. Unfortunate deal but we were able to learn from it.”
After swapping the lead back and forth with Don Mead several times during the early part of the 25-lap Hobby Stock main event, Michael Scruggs seized control of the race at the midway point and earned his first win of the year.
The Porterville driver took over the lead on Lap 12 and then cruised to an easy victory.
Mead out-battled Mike Hill, Jr. for second place. Chris Settlemire was fourth and Aaron Stewart took fifth.
“It’s been a long couple of last months,” Scruggs said. “We’ve had a lot of part failures and different things. People racing a little dirty and taking people out.”
Jeff Thompson completely dominated the 20-lap Mod Lite feature.
The Bakersfield driver led from start to finish, taking the checkered flag 1.999 seconds ahead of runner-up Zack Forster.
Thompson’s best result of the year previously was a pair of second place finishes.
“I didn’t have a very good car in the heat race,” Thompson said. “I got killed out there by those guys, but (afterward) we made an adjustment.”
Jerry Flippo, who came into the night with five feature wins in 2016, took third. Anthony Balcazar finished fourth and Roy Maynard, Jr. was fifth.
Bailey Thompson led all but two laps in winning the 15-lap Senior Mini Dwarf main event.
Thompson grabbed the top spot from Bryson Wood on Lap 3 and then pulled away for her first feature win of the year.
Kercie Jung was second. Sunnis Simkins, Jakob Carey, and Lane McDonald rounded out the top-five.
Jett Yantis passed Broedy Graham with four laps remaining to win the 12-lap Junior Mini Dwarf main event.
Graham paced the 14-car field the entire way until Yantis blew by him on Lap 9 and then hung on during a one-lap dash to the finish to earn his division-leading third feature win of the year.
Cole Forrester was second followed by Mason Ratfcliff, Nathaniel Edwards, and Graham.