It’s been more than ten years since Alex Papini raced at Madison International Speedway, but that didn’t really matter tonight as he joined the Midwest Dash field and after starting deep in the field, worked his way through traffic and cruised to victory lane in the 25 lap main event.
It was his second Dash win at Madison after taking home the checkered flag back on June 26th of 2015.
Shane Kohlmeier, who was making his first appearance at Madison, and Anna Price Malouf paced the field of seventeen four cylinder cars to the green flag. Price Malouf took the early lead with Tim Anderson up to second followed by Phil Malouf and hard charging Karter Stark just before a spin on lap 2 brought out the caution flag.
Price Malouf and Anderson brought the field back to green. After racing side by side, Anderson took the lead with Stark and Alex Papini quickly up to second and third on lap 4. Stark powered by Anderson on the outside to take the lead on lap 5 with Papini passing Anderson for second one lap later.
Stark and Papini wasted no time breaking away from the field with Stark holding a 0.8 seconds advantage with fifteen laps to go. But Papini wasn’t about to let Stark run away and hide as he closed the gap to 0.3 seconds by the half way point of the race.
On lap 14 Papini pulled to the inside of Stark to take the lead with Justin Schelitzsche running third followed by Anderson and Mark Dewey.
At this point It appeared that it was going to be an epic shootout between Papini and Stark. But that was not about to be the case tonight as disaster struck for Stark on lap 17 when his car slowed coming out of turn two thus ending his night prematurely.
Was there anyone who could keep up with Papini at this point? Possibly a caution flag? But that didn’t happen.
With five laps to go his lead over Dewey was more than eight seconds and growing. Right now the best race on the track was between Schelitzsche and Mark English for third as Papini was increasing his lead to almost ten seconds over the field.
From this point it was all Papini who cruised to victory lane. A strong run for Dewey, resulted in a runner-up finish with English, Schelitzsche, and Anderson rounding out the top five.
In victory lane, Papini thanked everyone who helped make his racing opportunity come to fruition including several of his former Late Model competitors from Rockford Speedway who helped make this trip to victory lane possible.
Earlier in the night, Papini set a new track record during group qualifying with a lap of 20.730 (86.831 mph).
Results
(1-10). Alex Papini, Mark Dewey, Mark English, Justin Schelitzsche, Tim Anderson, Justin Pearson, John Handeland, Phil Malouf, Pete Doxey, Al Strobel III
(11-17). Anna Price Malouf, Shane Kohlmeier, Morgan Zerwinski, Julia Pirog, Karter Stark, Travis Hill, Josh Rusch