BACON TURNS IN K.C. MASTERPIECE AT LAKESIDE

BACON TURNS IN K.C. MASTERPIECE AT LAKESIDE

Story By: Richie Murray/USAC Media

Photos By: Rich Forman/USAC RAcing

Kansas City, Kansas………One of the statistics bandied about in the week leading up to Saturday night’s USAC return to Lakeside Speedway was the fact that the most accomplished drivers in the sport, more often than not, seem to rise to the occasion when the venerable club visits the Kansas City, Kansas oval.

Coming into the event, 13 of the 17 drivers who had won USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car features at the old Lakeside Speedway half-mile and the newer Lakeside Speedway 4/10-mile were either USAC National champions or National Sprint Car Hall of Fame inductees.

One of those names absent from the list entering the Saturday night was Broken Arrow, Oklahoma’s Brady Bacon. The two-time USAC National Sprint Car champ came within a lap of stamping his initials on that list in 2016. One year later, though, redemption was on his mind as he led all 30 laps to score his first triumph at Lakeside.

On the start, Bacon jumped ahead from the pole while third-place starter, young Riley Kreisel stepped into second. Right off the bat, though, a campfire broke out underneath the hood of Bacon’s ride as a trail of smoke clouded the sky behind him. No harm, no foul, though, as it was merely a little overflow spilling out of the oil tank. Bacon glanced down at the oil pressure gage and reassured that everything was perfectly fine from his vantage point.

As Bacon stretched his lead up front, series point leader Justin Grant had pedaled his way to second past Kreisel midway down the back straightaway on lap 12 and began to race his way toward Bacon, who had just begun to enter the toils of negotiating lapped traffic.

Bacon split between the lappers down low, around the outside and anywhere he could go to escape the net Grant had begun to cast. Grant chiseled away at the lead as the gap between he and leader Bacon sunk down to the closest margin it had been all race.

Suddenly, third-running Kreisel emerged from the exit of turn four on the 18th lap with a flat right front tire, ending a superb run for the young Missouri driver who had wowed the crowd with his dazzling, rim-riding performance through the first half of the event.

While the news for Kreisel and, to an extent, Grant, was sour times, Bacon was pleased with how the circumstances played out for himself as the seas were now parted and lapped traffic would no longer play a factor in the immediate future.

“We just got caught in a bad spot a couple times with the lapped cars,” Bacon explains. “A couple laps like that and they can really reel you in pretty fast. If we had reached an open track again, I think we would have been okay and probably pulled away, but it just kind of slowed everything down briefly.”

When racing resumed with 13 laps remaining, Bacon consistently clung to the top line as Grant searched low (turns 1 and 2), high (turns 3 and 4) and anywhere in between, but was unable to make up any significant ground.

“We got to where we weren’t catching him,” Grant remembers. “I started searching the racetrack trying to find something, anything that I could make work to get back to him. Running second is good and all, but you want to win these things. We were really good before the caution. We really fought air pressure under yellows and reds after that. The tires would get so low that when coming back to green, the frame rails were in the dirt and we’d start bucking around, which allowed Brady got away from us.”

Bacon’s momentum would be unheeded down the stretch and, after taking the white flag, appeared headed for certain victory. However, two-time Lakeside winner Robert Ballou had arrived in third and was engaged with Grant for the runner-up spot. The two made contact coming off turn four with Ballou and Grant making slight contact, scuffing each other as if they were competing in the chariot race from Ben Hur. Grant got squirrelly as he passed underneath the flagstand. Grant dove to the bottom of turn one while Ballou hopped onto the first turn cushion, which bounced him into the air and sent him into a series of pirouettes against the concrete wall. He was okay, but his race and a bid for a third Lakeside win in as many years was over.