Lucas Punkari
After failing to finish the Street Stock main event in the season-opener the previous week, Emo’s Carlee Bosma returned to Emo Speedway on Saturday night with a picture-perfect evening.
Bosma, who has been competing in the division since 2006, dominated the field all night long—cruising to the checkered flag in both the heat and the feature to sweep the night’s events and into the top spot in the point standings.
“After we wrecked in the feature last week, we fixed a few parts on the car but that was about it really,” noted Bosma.
“The car has been running strong as soon as we got it out on the track this year, and my dad [John] has been keeping up the maintenance on it and it’s been running fine so far,” she added.
In the 15-lap feature, Bosma jumped out to an early lead and looked to be well on her to an easy win. But she soon encountered a mechanical issue that made things difficult.
“I started to lose my power steering fluid a few of laps into the race,” she recalled.
“It was just cutting in and out at different times and I sometimes couldn’t steer through the turns, but I was able to work my way through it.”
Bosma’s mechanical issues allowed Richard Visser to slowly reel her in for top spot. But when Libby Wilson began to battle it out with the long-time veteran for second place, that was all Bosma needed to solidify her hold on the lead.
“I was able to see them battle for the place out of the corner of my eye, and that pleased me a little bit,” she smiled.
Another driver who recovered from a setback in Week 1 was Brady Caul in the WISSOTA Midwest Modified division, who led from start to finish in the 20-lap feature to earn his first checkered flag of the season.
“We didn’t really get a chance to try out the car a whole lot last week as we got into a wreck, but everything’s pretty much the same on it since we put it back on the trailer at the end of last season,” Caul noted.
“It was similar conditions this week to what it was last week, so I’m very happy with how things went,” he added.
Despite tough competition from the likes of Chuck Lambert, Christopher Leek, and Cody Ossachuk running behind him, no one was able to challenge Caul during the main event as he held a steady gap over the rest of the field all race long.
“I was a little bit surprised by that,” the 2010 Midwest Modified champ admitted.
“I was kind of waiting for someone to challenge me there towards the end but no one did.”
Leek ended up finishing in second while Lambert held off heat winner Ossachuk to round out the top three.
And in the WISSOTA Modified division, defending champ Gavin Paull made it two-for-two in feature wins this season.
He made a beautiful three-wide pass on the outside at the start of the race to get past the front row of Ron Korpi and Steve Nordin heading into Turn 1.
“I wanted to get out in front as I wasn’t sure if it was going to rain right away or not,” noted Paull.
“When the rain starts, that guy who is in the lead usually wins the race,” he added as the skies opened above the 3/8th-mile oval after the race.
“So I was pretty much ‘Johnny on the Spot’ when we got rolling,” he smiled.
Once in the front, Paull used his skills once again to maintain the lead on a couple of mid-race restarts—getting the jump on rivals Denny Trimble and Dustin Wahl.
“I kept running just below the middle of the track and towards the bottom,” said Paull. “So if they were going to pass me, it was going to have to be on the top.
“That’s the long way around the track, so they were going to have a hard time getting that lead away from me.”
Wahl, who hails from Greenbush, Mn. and had won the heat, worked his way past Trimble late in the feature race to nab second place.
Action resumes at the Emo Speedway this Saturday (weather permitting), with hot laps at 7 p.m. and the first race at 7:30.
