town, and it’s small has racecar teams up each road working outside houses. The people in Belleville look forward to the Belleville Midget Nationals as an annual event and the entire town gets in behind it. Keith Kunz Motorsport has been working out of a certain families house for 14 years. The owners are third generation fans and they put up tents, and cook this huge feast for all the drivers and crew. We had been to the track the Thursday night and saw the 360 Winged Sprintcars run and they were flying. I was told that the Midgets would go around just under 1 sec per lap slower.
Friday Night had the 50 Midget entries parked in the infield. With the Grandstand full and the brass band playing the stage was set. Keith had told Brad that he would need to do at least the first heat to get a handle on the place, as you must run flat the whole way. They average 110mph.
Brad was about 5th car out for the 2-lap qualifier. He ran well in the first lap and then he set a blistering time last lap. 17.646 sec had him in 3rd fastest time. At this point we found that 3rd fastest was the worst place you could be, and this won’t make any sense. 3rd fastest starts from the rear of the heat race in grid 9 and they only take the top 4 cars out of each heat.
Brad headed out in Heat 3 from grid 8 and ended up finishing 3rd, the only top qualifier to transfer as all the other fast guys had not made it to the A Main from their heats.
We watched the B Mains and the 6 car pole shuffle. We knew at this point that Brad had run the 3rd best time, been the only car in the top 5 qualifying times to transfer and the best he could expect to start the A Main was grid which is where he started.
The A Main started and he ran right with the fast guys. He was sitting in 6th spot behind josh Wise at about half way and then Adam Clark dived down to the pole and passed Brad and 3 others. Brad shot down to try it and lost 6 places, yellow light and we are back in 12th place with 8 to go. The car had shown everyone that it was fast, however it was really loose in the last 6 laps and he was struggling to stay fast. He finished 16th of the 24 starters, one behind Michael Pickens who passed us on the last turn.
I think that all was better than anyone expected and the A Main result was not a true reflection of how well Brad had gone. Tonight is the big one as it all starts again in preparation for the 40 lap Belleville Midget National Event.
Have a look at the photo of one of the team owners Pete Willoughby standing at the bottom of turn 3, the banking is huge.
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