7/5/2014
Jake Kouba Earns First Sprint Car Win!
St. Croix Valley Raceway kicked off the Independence Day weekend with a full slate of racing on July Fourth, including 23 vintage racers. Buzzy Adams won his third consecutive WISSOTA Modified feature and qualified for the WISSOTA 100 Race of Champions this September along with Jason VandeKamp, who won the WISSOTA Midwest Modified main event. Ty Sampair claimed his second Micro Sprint win and Jake Kouba picked up his first career Traditional Sprint victory. Other feature wins went to Tim Baxter and Damon Roberts, while Mike Bjorklund and Ken Varing claimed the Northern Vintage Stockcar Racers’ features.
After charging through the field a week ago, only to come up one position short, Jake Kouba did himself one better on Friday and finally broke into Anderson’s Maple Syrup victory lane in UMSS Traditional Sprint Car Series action. Mike Haseltine and last week’s winner Rob Caho Jr. paced the field to green for their 25-lap main and second row starter Mike Mueller almost immediately vaulted from third to first at the start. Mueller was looking strong and stretching his lead in the early going while Cam Schafer was having a tremendous run, rocketing for the fourth row up to second place inside of two laps. Kouba, meanwhile, was actually going backwards early. After starting on the outside of the third row, Kouba got caught up in early three and four wide traffic and slid back to the eighth position in the opening laps. As things started to settle out, Johnny Parsons seemingly appeared from nowhere, cracking the top three inside of a handful of laps, after starting on the last row. At about that same time, Kouba’s #2k came to life. With Mueller in control of things up front, several car lengths in front of Schafer, Kouba began his surgery on the rest of the pack, slicing past his father Jimmy Kouba and last week’s nemesis, Caho, on lap eight. Mike Walters was the next to succumb to Kouba on lap ten. Parsons and Schafer quickly followed, leaving just the leader, Mueller, to contend with the last half of the race. In another four laps, Mueller was just as powerless as his compatriots as Kouba drove past him as well. The final ten laps saw Kouba drive on to his first career sprint car victory over Schafer, Mueller, Parsons and Walters in a caution-free race.
RACE RESULTS:
UMSS Traditional Sprints
Feature (25 laps) – Jake Kouba, Cam Shafer, Mike Mueller, Johnny Parsons, Mike Walters, Kevin Bradwell, Chase Viebrock, Jimmy Kouba, Rob Caho Jr., Mike Haseltine, Alex Peper, Josh Hendrickson, Scott Brandt, D Taubert.
Heat 1 (10 laps) – Viebrock, Mueller, Haseltine, Shafer, Peper, Walters, Parsons.
Heat 2(10 laps) – Jimmy Kouba, Jake Kouba, Caho Jr., Bradwell, Taubert, Brandt, Hendrickson.
Article Credit: Terry Lehnertz