Advertisement
Saturday night, that all changed.
 |
Korish started on the outside of the front row, won a mini-battle with J. Herbst to grab the lead, then held off several drivers to win his first race — heat or feature — of the 2008 season. Korish’s frustration was gone — at least for a night — as he steered his No. 32 car into Victory Lane.
“We’ve struggled all season to come back from a wrecked car,” Korish said. “We lost so many tires (in the wrecks) that we have been trying to play catch-up all season. We’ve been chasing the car, and trying to get back on our tire program all year.”
You would have never known it by the way the car and its driver performed Saturday night before a La Crosse Fairgrounds Speedway crowd estimated at 2,800. Korish was on top of his game, and was able to hold off a hard-charging Herbst, then Brent Kirchner, and eventually Kwik Trip Late Model Division points leader Steve Carlson, to grab that elusive checkered flag.
Carlson, who is on the verge of earning his second straight track championship with one week of the regular season remaining, found himself engaged in an intense battle for second place with Kirchner from Lap 6 until Carlson finally got underneath Kirchner and took the runner-up spot away from him on Lap 19.
By that time, however, Korish had at least an eight- to 10-car lead, and Carlson simply couldn’t catch Korish. Carlson finished second, while Kirchner, Kevin Nuttleman and Herbst rounded out the top five.
“We weren’t that good during practice, so we changed five things on the car. We were able to get a fast lap out of it,” said Carlson, whose qualifying time of 19.684 was one-thousandth of a second off the three-year-old track record set by Andy Burgess in 2005. “It was a fast track tonight. All of the top five or six cars were really good tonight.”
Especially Korish’s, who said he was very happy to see Kirchner and Carlson going at each other lap after lap. With those two battling, it allowed Korish to run out front without using up his tires.
“I was cheering Brent on the whole way,” Korish said. “Then when I saw Steve got by him and come up, I thought, ‘Here we go. This is going to be a hell of a battle.’ ”
Carlson ran out of laps before that happened, but his 14th top-five finish in 16 starts makes it awfully tough for his teammate, Nuttleman, to catch him even with two twin 50-lap features set for next week. Nuttleman, with a division-best five feature wins this season, is second in the Late Model points.
“The last few weeks we have been a little bit off. Tonight we were better,” said Carlson, who said was thinking a bit about the points standings. “When you are points racing, it’s always in the back of your mind.”
SPORTSMAN: There was a big shakeup in the North Country Contractors Sportsman Division as the points leader entering the night, Nick Clements, broke a hub or an axle - his right rear wheel came off - during practice. Clements was able to get back out, qualify, and run the semi-feature.
He finished 11th in the feature, however, and likely lost his points lead.
Trent Boetcher won the Sportsman feature race, while Rob Mason and Jimmy Gilster finished second and third, respectively.
THUNDERSTOX: Danielle Neary won the United Auto Supply Thunderstox Division feature race, while Keith Larson was second, and Adam Moore third.
