4/30/2022
USAC East Coast Sprint Cars
Bright Scores Second Career Win At Delaware International
Delmar, DE. April 29th, 2022. Nick Fillman, USAC ECSC
2021 USAC East Coast Series Champion Alex Bright, of Collegeville, PA out dueled fellow former winner at Delaware International, Kenny Miller lll to score his second win of the 2022 season.
The first ever points inversion feature in series history came on Friday night at the Delaware International Speedway, putting Bruce Buckwalter Jr and Christian Bruno on the front row of the 25 lap main event. With the top three in series points Briggs Danner, Steven Drevicki, and Alex Bright starting seventh, sixth, and fifth, following the inversion.
On the green flag of the feature event, Kenny Miller lll got a great start off the bottom side of the speedway, quickly working by both Bruno and Buckwalter for the race lead out of turn two. Alex Bright, also utilizing the bottom side of the speedway, worked his way up to second by the completion of lap one as well from his fifth place starting spot.
Miller would work his way out to a two car-length lead over Bright as both drivers were utilizing the same line on the speedway. Both were working the cushion on the extreme high side of the speedway in turns one and two, while working the extreme low side, nearly against the infield wall, in turns three and four.
Meanwhile, Joey Amantea had settled himself into the third place position over Bruce Buckwalter, Steven Drevicki, Christian Bruno and Briggs Danner. With the exception of Amantea, the rest of the top ten was fiercely contested with drivers trying a multitude of different line combinations to get around the very technical Delaware International Speedway.
Up front, Bright and Miller seemed to have about equal cars as the field completed lap ten, with the Bright needing a caution or a slight mistake from Miller to take the lead. Ultimately on lap 11, Bright was able to secure a big run on Miller off of the bottom side of turn four, and pull off the massive slide job for the lead in turn one and two, to take the lead down the back straightaway.
Steven Drevicki had begun to work his magic on the bottom side of the speedway and had worked away from the battle for fifth and drew in closer on the tail tank of Joey Amantea. Briggs Danner had begin to make some ground up on the high side of the speedway and picked off a few cars after trading places multiple times with Ed Aikin.
Bright had worked his way to over a straightway lead over Miller as the field came to the ten to go signal with Amantea still holding strong in third, Drevicki in fourth, and Christian Bruno battling hard to keep the fifth place spot away from Briggs Danner. While behind the battle for fifth, Ed Aikin, Bruce Buckwalter, and Kyle Spence fought hard to settle spots at the tail end of the top ten.
Even with a bit of lapped traffic coming into play and making things very interesting, Kenny Miller lll do nothing to reel in the lead of Alex Bright, as Bright would go on to collect his second feature event win of the 2022 season.
The win for Bright was his second career win at the Delaware International Speedway after picking up the victory last fall on his way to securing the championship. Bright and the Hummer Motorsports team have been fighting hard to find that extra touch of speed that they have been missing from last season later on in the feature events. Bright and team nailed the set up on Friday night at Delaware International and have begun to close the gap further on second place in the points standings.
Kenny Miller lll picked up his first runner up finish of the season at Delaware International, a track where the young driver picked up his first career win in the fall of 2020. Since coming into the series Miller has been impressive each and every time out aboard the the controls of the family owned entry. While Miller has a summer full of commitments that will prevent the team from running full time with the series, the early season success and consistency has found them sitting fifth in points.
Joey Amantea picked up a solid third place run Friday night, a nice rebound for the Mount Pocono, PA driver following an early feature event crash that ended their night early last week at the Port Royal Speedway. Amantea and team as of now intend on running the full series trail, and find them selves fourth in points heading into the summer months.
Steven Drevicki yet again picked up a top five finish with the series on Friday at Delaware International, a track where Drevicki has had success as well picking up a feature event win, and securing series championships. Drevicki has been back to fighting form all season long, and is just 21 points out of the championship lead, as the series heads to Bridgeport on Saturday.
Rounding out the top five with yet another impressive run was Deptford, NJ’s Christian Bruno. The micro sprint stand out, coming into what is now his junior year of running sprint cars has been an absolute pleasure to watch this season. The recent high school graduate has a very meticulous and methodical approach behind the wheel, and picks off drivers late in the going. While I’m sure Bruno and the family owned team would have liked better results after starting on the front row of the feature event, digging their way back up into a top five run is no small feat.
Friday night marked the return after almost two years for Bridgeton, NJ’s Kyle Spence. Spence who had been nursing a back injury, had a few off season surgeries that left him out of the seat of all racing a large period of time. Spence was back in action Friday night, picking up the heat race two victory. Unfortunately due to Friday being the teams debut of the season, and having no points, it left the team starting eighth in the feature event. Spence and team fought hard all night as they relearned sprint car racing a bit, and were rewarded with a solid top ten run.
Up next for the Rapid Tire, USAC East Coast Sprint Car Series, Presented by Capitol Renegade, is the second trip of the season to the high banks of the Bridgeport Motorsports Park on tomorrow, April 30th!
USAC East Coast at Delaware International Results:
Heat 1 (8 Laps, All transfer, 4 Handicap): 1. 20 Alex Bright, 2. 23M Kenny Miller lll, 3. 19 Steven Drevicki, 4. 83 Bruce Buckwalter Jr, 5. 7 Ed Aikin, 6. 117 David Swanson, 7. 23B Preston Lattomus, 8. 42 John Fraker.
Heat 2 (8 Laps, All transfer, 4 Handicap): 1. 22 Kyle Spence, 2. 17B Christian Bruno, 3. 88J Joey Amantea, 4. 5G Briggs Danner, 5. 67 Jason Cherry, 6. 83s Billy Ney, 7. 17J Jonathan Swanson (DNS).
Feature event (25 Laps): 1. 20 Alex Bright, 2. 23M Kenny Miller lll, 3. 88J Joey Amantea, 4. 19 Steven Drevicki, 5. 17B Christian Bruno, 6. 5G Briggs Danner, 7. 7 Ed Aikin, 8. 22 Kyle Spence, 9. 83 Bruce Buckwalter Jr, 10. 23B Preston Lattomus, 11. 117 David Swanson, 12. 17J Jonathan Swanson, 13. 67 Jason Cherry, 14. 83s Billy Ney (DNF), 15. 42 John Fraker (DNF).
Article Credit: Nick Fillman
Submitted By: Nick Fillman
