BRUNS ENDS SUNDAY RUMBLE ONE SPOT AWAY FROM TRANSFER By Zach Tasker For veteran midget racer Patrick Bruns, the 3rd and final day of the annual Rumble in Fort Wayne on Sunday December 28 was a shot at redemption after a tough opening two days. Friday night he struggled with the cars handling and couldn’t make it out to the track in time for the B main due to a gearing problem. Then the following evening Bruns had contact early in the B main forcing another DNQ for the feature. The Sunday afternoon started off fairly well for the Mike Wallace Racing team. MWR was prepping and crewing on the car owned by regular STARS midget owner Kenny G. Bruns would put in a lap time of 8.309 seconds in qualifying, which was good enough for 16th position. Due to the invert the 2014 Illini Racing Series champion would start the days 4th heat race on pole position, with the top 3 cars transferring to the feature. The Champaign, Illinois driver would lead the first few laps in convincing fashion holding off a hard charging Kyle Hamilton behind him. Unfortunately on lap four the car was starting to lose its brakes, and he got too hot into the entry of turn 3 and looped the car around. Fortunately, the field was able to avoid him but this put him all the way back to last place which was 7th. The remaining six laps he was able to charge back up to 5th and was all over the back of the 4th place car but ran out of time. For the third straight night, this put the driver of the #22 MWR/Paintwork by Z/Acro-Bat Classic Auto Beast/Brayton-Buick in the b main. He would start on the outside of row 1, and only the top 2 would transfer to the feature. At the start, he would lose a little bit of time, and a super quick Anthony Nocella, who had won Fridays feature event would slip to the inside of Bruns and take the position. The driver of the “black wheeled Buick” would hound Nocella the entire 12 lap event; however he just couldn’t find a way around the car. The Champaign, Illinois driver would miss the feature by one position. A heartbreaking end to the weekend after how hard the team had pushed for three straight days. “I have to thank Kenny G and Mike Wallace for giving me a good opportunity to come here and run. We just had a lot of mechanical trouble and on track incidents. Last night we had trouble avoiding another car and today we just fought the breaks, we had a good run in the heat race and couldn’t bring it home. Every time we hit the racetrack we were faster and kept working on it. Running indoors is a different animal compared to running outdoors. We brought a big track outdoor car to a little bitty tight indoor racetrack, so we didn’t bring the right ammunition. I think we can come back more prepared for what to expect next time.” Bruns, rookie sensation Jimmy Clark Jr. and the MWR team now set their focus on this weekend’s Tulsa Shootout where they will compete for a golden driller in the Ecotec midget class. Follow all the progress by liking MWR Technology/Lightning Chassis on Facebook.
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 04:12:03 +0000