Lucas Punkari
In his first appearance at the Emo Speedway in more than a decade, Grand Forks, N.D. native Brad Seng made a successful return to the 3/8th-mile oval Sunday night, outlasting 17 other drivers to capture victory in the NLRA Late Model feature event.
“We’ve had fast nights and we have had slow nights this year, and this is one of the nights that we were fast,” said Seng, who last ran here in a Super Stock special back in 1998.
“This is our first feature win this year, so we’re all pretty happy about that,” he smiled.
The defending series champ was able to catch and pass Joey Pederson for the lead just past the halfway point of the 25-lap main event.
He was able to work his way through a number of lapped cars that Pederson was not able to get around fast enough.
“If it wasn’t for lapped traffic, I don’t know if I would have got him,” Seng admitted.
“Once I was able to get by him, I could run the line that Joey was running and my car was running pretty well,” he added.
Seng did have to withstand a couple of late charges by Pederson and Mike Balcaen on a pair of restarts, but was able to hold off their advances to earn the checkered flag.
“I’m always worried on those restarts,” Seng said.
“The guys who are behind you just go where you’re not, and you never know what is going to happen,” he noted.
Pederson and Balcaen, who each won their respective heat races earlier that evening, followed Seng to the finish line to round out the top three.
Emo native Greg Ferris finished the feature in seventh place while Kyle Gavel of Fort Frances came home in ninth position.
Meanwhile, the three weekly divisions at the Emo Speedway also competed Sunday.
The lone local winner came in the WISSOTA Midwest Modified main event as Emo’s Brody Strachan took home his second-straight feature victory.
“My dad [Glen] was here for this one, so I think he was a little more excited about it than I was,” Strachan said.
“We kept things the same on the car after last week, and it was running good all race long until about five laps to go when I lost my power steering,” he noted.
“Then I had to start fighting the car a little bit.”
Besides an ill-handling car, Strachan also had to deal with the fact he had five cars all over his back bumper late in the race as Jeff Davis, Chuck Lambert, John Hettinga, Christopher Leek, and Dustin Wahl all were trying to take the lead away.
“I had no idea that all of those guys were behind me until I saw Jeff come underneath me as we raced to the line,” Strachan said.
Davis missed out on taking the checkered flag by about half-a-car length while Lambert finished in third place.
Lambert, Leek, and Hettinga each nabbed a checkered flag in their respective heats earlier in the night.
In the WISSOTA Modified feature, Winnipeg’s Ward Imrie rebounded from a slow start to work his way around Gavin Paull and Darian Boyce to collect the checkered flag in his first visit to Emo this season.
“I started in fifth place, but I fell back a little bit and I just couldn’t seem to get going out there,” Imrie recalled.
“I just went down low to try something and the car seemed to work all right after that.
“I just kind of rolled with it, and the car just kept getting better and better,” he enthused.
Paull and Jerome Guyot, who both won their respective heats, rounded out the top three.
And in the Street Stocks, Cody Wall had a successful debut at Emo as the Winkler, Man. native captured both the heat and feature races.
“The car felt really smooth out on the track today,” Wall said.
“It was a slow is fast kind of track, and I was happy to get my first win here on my first time on it,” he added.
“We will be back here again for sure in August when the fair comes to town,” Wall pledged.
Chris Shine and Jeff Wickstrom followed Wall to the finish line.
Regular racing action will resume this Saturday (weather permitting).
Hot laps are slated for 7 p.m., with the first heat getting underway at 7:30.
