Written by:
SPEED Staff
SPEEDtv.com
Fans of the Chili Bowl are primed for another amazing event. (ChiliBowl.com)
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The 23rd Annual Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals presented by General Tire kicked off in the most dramatic of fashions at the QuikTrip Center's Tulsa Expo Raceway on Tuesday night as Brad Kuhn slipped around Ricky Stenhouse, Jr., in the final pair of corners to win the 25-lap O'Reilly Qualifying feature event.
Collecting his second Chili Bowl preliminary feature win in as many years, Indiana's Kuhn locked himself into Saturday night's 50-lap Chili Bowl championship main event along with Memphis-area shoe Stenhouse and third-place finisher Steve Buckwalter of Royersford, PA.
"I didn't think I had the patience to do it 25 laps (run the bottom), thankfully Ricky didn't," Kuhn commented afterward.
While 67 drivers battled it out on the first of four Chili Bowl qualifying nights, four-time Chili Bowl king Sammy Swindell fought off a late bid from Tim McCreadie to win the 20-lap Race of Champions.
Kuhn's triumph in the nightcap main event, which assures him a starting berth among the front two rows of his fourth career Chili Bowl championship main event, came at the expense of open wheel grad and rising NASCAR star Stenhouse, who had paced 22 circuits and survived a scrape with fellow Memphis-area native Kevin Swindell along the way.
"When Kevin got up there on the outside and they got together, I think Ricky started searching more and that's what opened the door up," Kuhn commented.
After chasing Buckwalter to the stripe in his heat race after starting from the pole and then climbing from seventh to third in his qualifier, Kuhn gridded the feature field inside the fifth row aboard the Toyota-powered RW Motorsports No. 17b Beast.
The two-time National Midget Driver of the Year spent minimal mid-pack time though, cracking the top three by the time two laps were in the books. And after a rousing final set of ten laps, it was Kuhn's bold move to the inside of Stenhouse that netted the win.
Kuhn explained that, "I kept inching up on him, when we came off the backstretch I was kinda reserved to run second there and just be locked in to save our car but when I got such a good run off of two and I got in there, I decided, 'Well we're just gonna go for it and see what happens'."
Setting the stage for the electrifying finish, reigning Badger Midget champion Mike Hess gunned into the lead from the pole position and paced the initial two rounds before getting into turn three too hot and spinning to a stop.
Third-starter Stenhouse assumed the point and led the ensuing circuits in front of front row outside starter Casey Shuman and Kuhn, as the younger Swindell tried to make it an "All-Swindell" night after watching his father take Race of Champions honors.
Kevin Swindell's night had opened with a close heat race win over Chad McDaniel. But a qualifying race spin after contact with McDaniel sent last year's sixth-place Chili Bowl finisher to a "B" Main that he won to earn the 17th starting slot in the feature.
Swindell wasted little time racing through the field, advancing to eighth by the time Brady Short spun with three laps in the books and then having a nifty move from fourth to second on the seventh circuit negated by a Ricky Williams spin in turn four.
The young gun from Germantown, TN, soon battled his way past Shuman and Kuhn as he set his sights on the pacesetting Stenhouse, who hails from nearby Olive Branch, MS. The battle came to a premature end though when Stenhouse clipped the berm exiting turn four and skittered across the track with the resulting contact sending Swindell into the wall and onto the hook eleven laps short of the checkered flag.
"I just got into the berm there coming off of four and it shot me off the racetrack," Stenhouse explained of the incident. "I tried stopping, but I didn't even know he was out there and just got into him."
