Lucas Punkari
After running into a string of bad luck since making his debut in the WISSOTA Midwest Modified division last year, 16-year-old Brody Strachan had his most successful night to date Saturday as the Emo native earned his first feature win at the Emo Speedway.
The only problem was that his father, WISSOTA Modified driver Glen, was not there to celebrate as he was working in Alberta over the weekend.
“I phoned him right after the feature and he said, ‘I’m proud of you, but why couldn’t you get the win while I was there,’” Strachan joked.
“He hasn’t won a feature in a while so I’m not sure what he will think about this,” the teen smiled.
Having led for most of the first heat before fading to a fourth-place finish, Strachan left the rest of the 14-car field in the dust at the start of the feature as he pulled out to an early lead.
“I’m starting to get a hang of the car more and more,” he noted.
“I wasn’t sure what I was doing at first, but now I have an idea of what the car does and where I can push it out on the track,” he explained.
“I just needed some luck as it seemed like we were blowing engines every second weekend, so it was pretty exciting to be up at the front for once.”
Although he lost the lead to defending division champ Christopher Leek near the halfway point of the race, Strachan regained the top spot during a caution when Leek was sent to the rear of the field after he was deemed to have caused a bottleneck situation on the backstretch prior to a restart.
“When they sent him to the back, I was pretty pumped up,” Strachan enthused.
“Chris was running pretty fast at that point and I didn’t think I was going to be able to catch him, so I was pretty excited to have the lead back,” he added.
Once he regained the lead, Strachan was pretty much untouchable as he pulled away from Jeff Davis and John Hettinga to earn the checkered flag.
“I didn’t even know that I had that good of a lead there,” he admitted.
“I was a little worried as I saw a couple of bumpers at times, and I almost spun out of Turn 2 close to the end, so I thought I had better jump up to the top of the track,” Strachan recalled.
“Once I did that, I was able to pull away from the field according to what the guys in the pits told me.”
Cody Ossachuk and Brady Caul won the heat races earlier in the night.
In WISSOTA Modified action Saturday night, Darian Boyce’s last-minute decision to head to the 3/8th-mile oval paid off as the Winnipeg driver finished in first place in both the heat and the feature.
“We were wondering where we were going to go and race earlier in the afternoon,” recalled Boyce, who runs on a regular basis in Winnipeg and Morden.
“Once we found out that everything was all good in Emo, we decided to head down here and the car was excellent, which made things a lot of fun,” he remarked.
After working his way up from the fifth starting spot, Boyce powered his way down the frontstretch to get by Gavin Paull for the lead early on—and quickly pulled away from the rest of the field.
“I found some really good bite on the frontstretch, and I just had a lot of momentum coming into the first corner,” he explained.
“The car drove into the turn nicely, and he [Paull] slid up the race track at just the right time to allow me to get by him.”
Paull dropped out of the race shortly afterwards with a mechanical issue, which allowed Tyler Brown and Ron Korpi to move into second and third place in the final running order.
And in the Street Stock division, Kendal Gamsby of Atikokan snapped Ron Westover’s three-race win streak in feature, leading right from the start en route to the checkered flag.
“We have made a number of improvements on the car every week and we have been running in second place, so I was happy that we finally got a win,” he smiled.
“I had a little bit of luck tonight as I was able to start on the front row and I was able to get away from everybody.
“Hopefully, we can do just as well here the next time,” Gamsby reasoned.
Jeff Wickstrom and Alex Gamie followed Gamsby to the finish line while Westover pulled off the track in the late going with mechanical issues, which prevented him from completing a clean sweep after winning the heat earlier in the night.
Racing at the Emo Speedway will resume this Sunday—instead of the usual Saturday night date—as the NLRA Late Models will make a special appearance along with the three weekly divisions.
Hot laps are scheduled to take place at 6 p.m., with the first heat set for 6:30.
If Mother Nature doesn’t co-operate Sunday, a rain date is slated for Monday (July 1) at 2 p.m.
