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18-Year Old Rockets His Way in to 82 Speedway Sprint Car Bandits Victory Lane to Become 15th Different Series Winner in Past 19 Events!
Petty, TX (4/28/19) by DarinShort.com. With his twin sister and mom cheering him on in the stands (and his dad turning the wrenches on the car), 18-year old Casey Burkham chased down race leader and 'Stepdad' (as Casey's crew affectionately nicknames him) ‘Wild Willy’ Eggimann in lapped traffic to take the lead, and eventual $2,000 win, at the Sprint Car Bandits series event held at the beautiful 82 Speedway in Petty, Texas on Saturday night April 27th.
Equally as beautiful was the weather for the event, with temps hovering around the 80° all night long.
The night started off with three www.KoolTrikes.com heat races, that went G-W-C…yet, just before anyone could comment on how smooth and fast they were ran, Austin Mundie’s sizzling fast #4 sprinter would go flipping down the end of the backstretch into corner #3 after his throttle stuck.
Following the hair-raising incident, Austin would emerge unscathed to the roar of the crowd, and the crew would go to frenetic-paced work pit-side to attempt to get the car reassembled back together in time to make the feature.
And with the assistance of a team of pit warriors, they would, as he would join the other 21 A-feature cars just in the nick of time, to start in 14th.
It would prove to be worth their efforts with Austin’s stellar drive in the feature event. More on that in a bit.
After a fan-thrilling 4-wide parade lap paced by Randy Butler’s (yes, the retired Wisconsin sprint car driver) www.KoolTrikes.com Corvette pace car, assuming high points driver (after pole sitter Dalton Stevens car would suddenly drop out coming down to the green) Will ‘Wild Willy’ Eggimann (transplanted veteran sprint car driver from Jackson, MN via the East Coast) would take immediate command of the feature race.
Then a sequence of relatively bizarre events would occur.
The caution would come out for a spun-out car, and upon realigning the cars, it was found that the transponders of two of the cars somehow got crossed up in the track scoring system, forcing several laps of caution while scorers got it straightened out.
And in the meantime, the track surface threw all the drivers a major curve ball, as all the recent rains and trapped moisture just below the surface would continue to rise. The net effect was many of the team’s cars would become very tight on the fast, now sticky & slurpy surface.
Several tense moments would take place with drivers getting up on two wheels atop the ultra-fast track, and Chance “Mow Time” McCrary would do a soft roll-over in turn one, and a few laps later, Junior Jenkins would suffer the same fate at the apex of corners 1-2. Both drivers were reported to be okay.
With the event clock now showing 20-minutes in, and only three laps completed, during the red flag teams were allowed to add fuel to their cars – which I believe is the first time in series history would take place.
It was at about the same time three fast running cars would suddenly drop out for unrelated reasons: Colby Estes, Brad Queen and Josh Hawkins.
Eggimann would resume a blistering pace around the 1/3-mile, high banked black pond-dirt oval, advancing through lapped traffic cleanly. By mid-race you could see his ever-tightening J&J Chassis car struggle to stay in the fast line along with a glowing rear brake rotor, while Casey Burkham would keep pressure on Eggimann in his well-prepared Schnee Chassis #45B. A few laps later Burkham would pounce in lap traffic to cleanly get past the #77W of Eggimann.
Burkham’s car could not escape the suddenly wicked-fast conditions either, as his car would tighten up more than he would have liked, but it stayed good enough to propel him to his first-ever Sprint Car Bandits 360C.I. feature win.
An elated Burkham in victory lane was joined by his proud dad and crew, and he would become the 15th different SCB series winner in the past 19 events dating back to the start of 2018 – a real testament to the strength of the group of drivers in the series, and its ultra-competitive rules package.
The final 22 laps would flash by G-W-C, with lap times in the 12-second bracket, and the event completing at 10:56pm.
And what about Austin Mundie? Well, he would bounce back in amazing fashion after the post-heat race incident by driving past 11 cars in the feature to come home in the final podium position. Hats off to Austin and crew for facing adversity – and conquering it.
Scott Evans, Dalton Stevens and Brad Queen would win the www.KoolTrikes.com heat race wins, and each will collect $100 from Randy Butler next week. Randy was wearing quite a few hats last night, between his Kool Trikes display, our request for him to be pace driver throughout the night, and his heat race promos. So, he will be mailing out those awards to the winning drivers this week. Thank you once again to Randy for teaming up with the Sprint Car Bandits series!
Here’s the complete A-feature rundown from 82 Speedway, on April 27th, 2019. And note that the next series event will be held at the brand-new Buffalo Creek Speedway in Canton Texas this coming Saturday night, May 4th. Click www.BCS19.com for complete track details, and check out www.SprintCarBandits.com where you’ll find the event flyer and press release. Thanks once again to everyone that supported the event, 82 Speedway for an awesome facility and racing surface, and to the area fans that got a really good taste of what is to come when the Series returns to 82 on June 15th for the $2,000/win and $300/start ‘Texoma 25.’
Sprint Car Bandits A-feature Results – 82 Speedway, Petty, TX 4/27/19:
Casey Burkham #45B (started 3rd)
Will Eggimann #77W
Austin Mundie #4
Chad Wilson #20
Dale Wester #12W
Scott Evans #118
Claud Estes III #74E
Bryan Debrick #10
Michael Day #2
DJ Estes #74
Cody Freeman #02
Michael Merrell #33
Daniel Estes #72
Marcus Thomas #15T
Kodey Keimig #27
Junior Jenkins #23
Steve McMackin #41M
Brad Queen #55
Colby Estes #71
Josh Hawkins #80
Chance McCrary #13M
Dalton Stevens #99X
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