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Photo by http://www.johnsracingphotos.com
Mike Henry races to 7th place finish at Pacific Sprint Fall Nationals Saturday night in Chico
By Gary Thomas
Chico, CA – October 5, 2009…Coming into the 18th annual Pacific Sprint Fall Nationals with momentum on his side former two-time Civil War Series champion Mike Henry continued his solid and consistent season this past weekend and drove to a seventh place finish in the prestigious $6,000 to win, 40-lap finale at the Silver Dollar Speedway.
Henry went into the final weekend of the Silver Dollar Speedway season following a victory and a runner-up the previous week and proceeded to back that up with his career best run at the Fall Nationals this past Saturday night. "It's been a great season for us so far and the run at the Fall Nationals was pretty good so I'm happy with it," said Henry. "We got up to fifth in the feature and then some of the guys with new tires started coming on late in the race and we had some good battles so that made it fun and hopefully the fans enjoyed those last laps."
The Pacific Sprint Fall Nationals is a three-night, winged 360 sprint car show, which splits the fields in half on Thursday and Friday, exactly the same way that is seen at the Gold Cup Race of Champions. Henry took part in Friday night's preliminary action and started off strong by cutting the third fastest lap out of the 39 entrants on hand. He then brought home a fourth place finish in his heat race and took fifth in the first dash to give the Rudy & Bev Warrington owned, A.R.T Chassis No. 18 sprinter a fifth row starting spot in the main event.
By feature time the track surface had become extremely racy and what followed happened to be arguably the very best main event seen all season at the Silver Dollar Speedway. Henry would fight his way forward and get right on the cusp of the top-five at one point, before having some issues with a couple lapped cars and dropping a few spots to cross under the checkered in 10th to conclude the evening. "The track was great tonight, but I just had a couple problems with traffic and it cost us some positions," Henry said. "That's racing though sometimes and we still got some good points at least and could roll the car into the trailer at the end of the night so I can't complain."
When Saturday night rolled around Henry found himself sitting 14th in the overall Pacific Sprint Fall Nationals points out of 74 total drivers. Windy conditions as the day progressed began to take its toll on the surface by the time the A-main rolled out onto the speedway and starting from the seventh row the Sacramento driver fell into line at the waving of the green flag. With rubber quickly developing it made for a freight train towards the bottom of the speedway, but just before the halfway point of the 40-lap contest, tires started to become an issue. With a few blown tires and a number of caution laps being run the red flag was unveiled for a fuel stop on lap 23.
During the stoppage a number of teams made tire changes and when the cars lined back up for the restart, Henry found himself sitting well into the top-10. The final 17-circuits saw the intensity level heat up as drivers with newer rubber battled their way towards the front and created some entertaining action to close out the Silver Dollar Speedway season. With the laps winding down Henry positioned himself in the fifth spot, but would drop back to sixth when young Brett Miller made the move around him on the backstretch.
A couple laps later Henry would return the favor and reclaim the spot, but a hard-charging Kyle Larson and Tyler Walker would put the No. 18 machine back to seventh by the finish. The main event was captured by two-time & current Civil War champ Sean Becker, who won the Fall Nationals for the very first time in his career. "I want to congratulate Sean Becker and his team on their win," said Henry. "I've had a lot of great battles with Sean this year and it's always a lot of fun to race with him so it's pretty cool to see a guy you've raced with all year win a big race like this."
Next up for Henry and the Rudy and Bev Warrington No. 18 will be the annual Trophy Cup at the Thunderbowl Raceway in Tulare on October 23 and 24. "I'm really excited to be able to run the Trophy Cup again," commented Henry, who scored a career best Thunderbowl Raceway finish of fifth at last years Pombo/Sargent Classic in June. "I definitely got more comfortable at the track running all the Golden State Challenge shows in Tulare last year so that certainly gives me some confidence going into the Trophy Cup."
All of your info on the 16th annual Trophy Cup can be found at http://www.thunderbowlraceway.com
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After closing the Civil War season the previous Saturday with a fifth place finish in the series standings Sacramento's Mike Henry came back this past weekend and tallied a seventh place result in the 18th annual Pacific Sprint Fall Nationals at the Silver Dollar Speedway. Photo by http://www.graphxdesigns.com
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