Roy Ophime Photo
By: Kevin Ramsell
Oregon, WI – Casey Johnson got the outside lane to work to his advantage as he passed defending two-time ASA Midwest Tour champion Gabe Sommers with seven laps to go and went on to win his second Joe Shear Classic 200 presented by Toyota on Sunday afternoon at Madison International Speedway in Oregon, Wisconsin.
The Edgerton, Wisconsin driver used the home track to his advantage to work his way around Sommers for the victory.
Johnson, who has run a limited schedule for personal reasons the last couple of years, was all smiles in victory lane.
“You just never know if you’re going to be able to get the caliber wins again, you know. So it was a big test for our team,” Johnson exclaimed. “Maybe not my team, but more for me, you know. It just… You always think you have it, but you never know until you do it. And we got a lot of breaks today, but it’s pretty cool moves on the track too.”
The road to victory was not easy as he was in the process of making the winning move when the final competition caution came out with 21 laps to go in the race. Johnson and Sommers led the field back to the green, but didn’t last long as Andrew Morrissey blew a tire on the frontstretch to bring out the final caution.
Sommers got the lead on the restart, but Johnson stayed on his bumper and made the winning move to the outside with eight to go. Following a side-by-side battle, Johnson got ahead of Sommers on lap 195.
“They’ll get worn down and find the right lane to get by them. Yeah, that’s kind of my style. I mean, I don’t like to tear my cars up,” Johnson said about the clean pass for the victory. “You know, we work on them and like I said, when I’m racing with a guy like Gabe, he’s come a long way, you know, and I can trust him, and it was a good race. I mean, we could go door to door, I could swing it up high on him, and it’s a lot of fun.”
Sommers is off to a good start to defending his championship, and while it was a good points day, he was hoping to finish one position higher.
“Honestly, the car wasn’t that good. I didn’t think we’d have enough to hold off Casey,” Sommers explained. “He was really good behind us. And I tried everything, stayed front of them, just didn’t have enough. So got a build on it. Just kind of looking for wins here right now. It sucked, but it’s got to make it better.”
Justin Mondeik, who pitted later for his fresh two tires than the rest of the field, took advantage by running from mid-pack and wrestled his way to a third-place finish.
“Yeah, it was pretty crazy. There was a lot of tight racing, a lot of hard racing.
I felt like it could have been a little more respectful sometimes through the race,” Mondeik said after the race. “Just look at the left side of my car here, but honestly, we just had a really good long-run car all weekend, struggled on the short run, but I think the long run always pays off in this race, and it seems like that’s what it did.”
Fast qualifier Michael Bilderback finished fourth with Austin Nason rounding out the top five.
Nason appeared to be the class of the field as he was challenging defending winner Ty Majeski for the lead on lap 143 when Nason got on the inside of Majeski for the lead.
The two appeared to make small contact in turn four, causing Majeski’s left rear to go flat. Majeski tried to save the car but snapped and made hard contact with the wall, ending his attempt to win the race for a third time in a row. Officials reviewed the incident and made the call that Nason was involved, sending him to the rear of the field. He bounced back for his top-five finish.
Paul Shafer Jr. and Ty Fredrickson also had hard contact with the turn-three wall on lap 89. It appeared Shafer’s car got loose in turn three and collected Fredrickson. Both drivers walked away from the incident.
Max Kahler won the 12-lap positioning heat. Bilderback came up short of a new track record with his fast lap time of 17.294 seconds.
The ASA Midwest Tour will be back in action on Saturday, May 23rd, with the Salute the Troops 100 at Jefferson Speedway in Jefferson, Wisconsin.
A replay of the race can be seen on midwesttour.tv.