Rico Abreu celebrates in with his crew after winning his second straight Chili Bowl Nationals at Tulsa Expo Raceway Saturday night. Photo by Patrick Grant
For the second time in as many years, the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals was ruled over by California’s Rico Abreu, who wheeled the Keith Kunz Motorsports No. 97 to victory in the 30th edition of the Midget car event at the Tulsa Expo Raceway in Tulsa, OK.
With a packed house of nearly 20,000 in attendance at the River Spirit Expo Center, the chant of “Rico, Rico” soon followed a series of wicked celebratory doughnuts.
Giving chase from the fourth starting spot, Abreu was among the first of the front runners to test the high groove on the freshly prepped raceway as his teammate, Christopher Bell, led the charge. Bell’s lead came to an end when contact with a slower car on lap 9 sent his racer spinning around. Bell would restart the race at the back of the field.
Than handed the lead over to Bryan Clauson, who quickly pulled out to as much as a 2.6 second advantage over second place, Zach Daum.
As the race neared the halfway mark, Clauson found himself racing in traffic, allowing Daum and Abreu to close. After a caution on lap 43, Clauson soon came under fire on the restart, with Abreu taking the lead on lap 45. From there, Abreu went uncontested for the rest of the 55 lap event to take the win. Clauson finished in second, with Daum in third.
“It took a lot longer for it widen out,” said Clauson of the track. “As silly as it sounds at that point in the race, I’d have rather been running second or third and hadn’t spent 10 laps trying to maneuver and figure out what I needed cause the first lap of the restart I went in where I had been running, it wasn’t very good anymore.”
Asked about his level of competitiveness, Daum replied, “We were decent, we weren’t great. We were way too tight early. Then once we moved to the cushion we were even tighter still. We struggled with side bite all weekend. So when we went to this race we kind of maybe a little bit overboard. It’s still nothing to be ashamed of we run third.”
Jerry Coons, Jr. ran third in his 13th consecutive A-Feature start with NASCAR’s Kyle Larson finishing in fifth.
Tim McCreadie, Tyler Thomas, Thomas Meseraull, Tanner Thorson, and Joey Saldana rounded out the top ten.
With 335 drivers competing throughout on Saturday’s races, the weekend ended with a flip count of 59. Joe B. Miller, who placed 21st in Saturday’s A-Feature, took home Chili Bowl Rookie of the Year honors.
The 2017 dates have already been announced with racing action at the 31st annual Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals taking place January 10-14, 2017.
For more information, visit ChiliBowl.com.
Tulsa Expo Raceway – Tulsa, OK
Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals – Jan. 16, 2016
Lucas Oil Championship Night
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1. 97-Rico Abreu
2. 63-Bryan Clauson
3. 5D-Zach Daum
4. 5-Jerry Coons, Jr.
5. 71K-Kyle Larson
6. 47X-Tim McCreadie
7. 91T-Tyler Thomas
8. 2X-Thomas Meseraull
9. 67-Tanner Thorson
10. 17-Joey Saldana
11. 8K-Blake Hahn
12. 71-Christopher Bell
13. 67Z-Kasey Kahne
14. 17G-Shane Golobic
15. 77B-Alex Bright
16. 17R-Ricky Stenhouse, Jr.
17. 24-Tracy Hines
18. 1-Sammy Swindell
19. 71G-Damion Gardner
20. 99P-Dillon Welch
21. 3B-Joe B. Miller
22. 71X-Shane Cottle
23. 38-Justin Grant
24. 21-Daryn Pittman
25. 2A-C.J. Leary
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