9/28/2019
IRA Lightning Sprints
Malueg claims 6th feature of the year, Neau clinches 1st championship, Douglas earns Rookie of the Year honors!
12 cars signed in for the season finale at Plymouth Dirt Track. The event, dubbed as the “Wisconsin State Sprint Car Championships”, saw the pits full with over 100 cars across 4 sprint car divisions. Coming into championship night, the 16 of Mike Neau held a 22 point lead over the 55H of Mark Heinert. Last week after taking his 3rd victory of the season, Heinert cut 18 points off of Neau’s previous lead so the 22 point deficit was definitely in striking distance for Heinert. The duo would qualify 1st and 2nd with Heinert grabbing his 4th quick time of the year. This would put each driver starting 4th in their heat races. Heinert was able to bring home a 2nd place finish in heat 1 and Neau would win his heat race, narrowly extending the lead to 23 points before the feature. The “3” pill was drawn and that would line up Neau 5th and Heinert 6th for the 20 lap A-Main with Neau needing a 5th or better finish to lock up the championship.. Mike Unger in the 76 would lead the field to green from his pole position starting spot but quickly yield the point to the 13 of CJ Malueg who started to his outside. Heinert was up to 3rd on lap 1 as Neau remained in 5th. Heinert was able to navigate past Unger and claim the 2nd spot on lap 2 as Neau advanced to 4th and started working on Unger for 3rd. Meanwhile, Malueg had open track and found a fast groove around the middle where rubber was deposited from the previous sprint A-mains. Once Neau passed Unger for 3rd, the top 3 broke away from the field but no one was gaining on anyone until they reached lapped traffic. Malueg was able to get through the traffic the best without altering his line too much and lapped up to 5th place, taking the white flag just as Unger spun in front of him in 1 and 2 bringing out a yellow and setting up a 2 lap green-white-checkered finish. Malueg would hold on and bring home his 6th feature win of the season, with Heinert and Neau rounding out the podium. The 01 of Ron Brannam stole the 4th spot on the final turn and claimed the hard charger by advancing 5 spots. Neau would hang on to his point lead and be crowned this season’s champion and the 5k of Kevin Douglas would earn Rookie of the Year honors in the most impressive showing by a rookie this series has seen in quite some time despite not being in attendance at the season finale.
2019 championship results are as follows:
1 – 16 –Mike Neau
2 – 55H Mark Heinert
3 – 13 – CJ Malueg (2019 Wilmot Raceway Track Champion)
4 – 5K – Kevin Douglas (2019 ILS Rookie of the Year)
5 – 74 – Tim Brannam
Submitted By: Mike Neau
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