Lawrenceburg, Indiana – The 7th Annual Spring Fling came and went with a familiar face in victory lane. WFO Rain won his 3rd Spring Fling becoming the only driver to win it more than once. Not only did he win but he did it without qualifying. WFO Ranger powered around DOIT Ice for second to complete the 1-2 WFO sweep. Fan favorite VLR_McGee used a late caution to move into 3rd, with Gates bringing XCR a top 5 finish in 4th and Ice limped home with a 5th place finish.
Many of the top contenders either were not able to show or had issues that caused them to leave early. BLS_Wheel and XCR Gage were no-shows while JFR_Faschek had to load up early. The biggest heartbreak of the night had to be with VLR_Shock, who was looking for his 1st Spring Fling title, was forced to retire on lap 29 with a blown motor while leading the race by about a second over Rain and Ice.
Qualifying started with DOIT 5 setting a blistering pace of 11.96 seconds around the track but it was matched by 3 other drivers which was broken by TRT and DOIT 5 was the top dog in qualifying until the last qualifier of the day VLR_Shock laid down an 11.94 stealing the pole and setting himself up for a strong run.
Heat 1 was a bit of a surprise as Doit 0 came away with the win with Shock getting the 2nd qualifying spot out of the heat and into the Snicker’s Dash
Heat 2 would see Karl and D77 fail to make the dash as Gates and F1yer would prove to be too tough.
Heat 3 Ice was able to muscle his way from 4th to the win and would be followed by Orso and Licmer for the win and Orso stayed strong and finished 2nd.
In the C-Main Doit 4 (formally WFO Josh) find his winning ways was able to outpace Ranger, D5, and Kev for the win as the other 3 also transferred to the B.
Rainman was able to pull away from D77 to pick up the B-Main win with D77 coming home in 2nd. Fan favorite McGee took 3rd and Ranger kept his night going by finishing 4th and advancing to the Spring Fling A-Main.
The Snicker’s Dash would finish just as it began with Shock winning, Ice in 2nd, 3rd went to F1yer, 4th was D0, 5th place was Gates, and Orso finished in 6th.
Finally the 21,203 fans would be on their feet for the start of the 7th Annual Spring Fling to see over 8000hp battle it out for 100 laps to see who would be crowned champion. Shock jumped out to an early lead thanks in part to a bit of a pile up on lap 3 that sent F1yer to the back but allowed Ice and Rain to move up to 2nd and 3rd where they would do battle for several laps allowing Shock to build up a nice cushion. By lap 25 Shock was in cruise control while Rain and Ice struggled to run down the leader but on lap 29 Shock’s string of bad luck continued in the Spring Fling as he would lose a motor, ending his best chance to be the Spring Fling winner and handed the lead over to Ice.
Rain was tucked in close and on lap 34 the 1st caution of the night would fall when D77 would blow a right front tire and stall on the track. On the restart Rain would immediately get around Ice for the lead and start to pull away. For the next 10 laps Rain was steadily faster than Ice but F1yer used the caution to catch back up and started to work on Ice. On lap 45 F1yer would clear Ice and start running down the leader. At this point it was clear that Ice was having issues and could not match the times of Rain and F1yer. F1 was very patient in running down Rain and on lap 80 finally got to his bumper but this was not a good thing as F1 tried a different line and found himself spun out in the infield and saw his chance of being a Spring Fling champion come to an end. By this time Ranger had caught up to Ice and Ice moved up and let him go around him and would try to start running down the 2-time champion. And with 3 laps to go he would have a shot as Orso would cut down a left rear tire. Rain would get the jump on the restart and chaos would ensue behind him and Ranger leaving Ice as the big loser on the restart. In the end it was Rainman bringing home his 3rd Spring Fling trophy with Ranger grabbing 2nd. McGee found his way into 3rd with Gates 4th and Ice rounding out the top 5. 6th went to Orso while 7th place was Doit 0. The last car to finish was D77 who came home 8th. F1yer finished 9th and Shock was credited with 10th.
After the race we caught up to Rain who was celebrating with a Milwaukee’s Best in one hand and his lucky bong in the other. “Son of a bitch! That was a great race. I don’t know what happened to F1 because he was there then he wasn’t. He was really fast and it was going to be a hell of a race. I’m so proud of Ranger for getting up to 2nd making this a WFO 1-2 finish. “
Ranger quickly came over to celebrate with Rain, “Man, Rain is the man at this race. I had a really good car but had way to much ground to make up and after running the C and B-Mains I was starting to wear down a little. Glad to see WFO get another Spring Fling win and hopefully next year I’ll be the one holding that trophy!
We caught up with McGee at the ol # 53 trailer where McGee seemed very happy with his results. “Hot Dog what a finish. Everyone was wreckin on the bottom and I was able to finally get something going on the top side and got around all the mess going on around the bottom.”
Well the 7th Annual Spring Fling is In the books and once again Rain was able to beat the field to bring home his 3rd Spring Fling trophy in 7 attempts. Next year should be bigger and better and the bidding has already started to see who will host the 8th Annual Spring Fling!