Kenny Merchant keeps winning, taking his 6th win of the year at Boothill

Kenny Merchant keeps winning, taking his 6th win of the year at Boothill

Shreveport, Louisiana (August 31, 2002) – Kenny Merchant claimed his series leading 6^th victory of the season as he dominated the second half of the 50-lap feature. Merchant chased Ronny Adams through much of the first half of the feature and appeared to be capable of taking the lead at the slightest slip by Adams. As it turned out, Adams suffered a broken steering rack and Merchant slid by to take the lead on lap 24 and he never looked back building a lead as big as a half-track en route to the victory in his J.D. Caver/Bayou Fabricators/Goddard Performance Keith Craft-powered Ford Mustang Warrior.

“We had a good car, just one of them nights that everything just went good. The motor held up, the tires, the Warrior Race Car and everything else. I really figured Ronny would be a little better then he was, which he was pretty good. I heard he actually broke a rack but I felt like we were probably going to get by him anyway. I don’t know, he may have been having steering problems the whole time before he broke the rack, I don’t know.”

One of the reasons that Merchant was able to build up such a big lead was that second place runner Doug Ingalls had his hand full with his race car and with the constant pressure from David Ashley. Ingalls held off all of Ashley’s challenges and held on to second place with Ashley a close third. “I was fighting it. We just had a little too much bite in it. It was picking up the wheel too much and I was having to get off the gas too much in the corners. I knew I couldn’t run with Kenny, I just started trying to make sure I didn’t make any mistakes and to hold on to what I had. Fortunately there was a good guy like David behind me.”

While Ashley was unable to get by Ingalls for second, he was able to close in on Rodney Wing in the battle for the 2002 O’Reilly SUPR Late Model Championship. Ashley now trails Wing by 20 points with 5 events remaining on the 2002 schedule.

Ashley felt he had a better car than Ingalls but he wasn’t going to move him out the way to make the pass. “I would have had to touch him to pass him and I won’t rub somebody to them. I mean I want to pass them clean but if it were for a million dollars he might of got rubbed on. I mean he ran a good race, his car wasn’t way off we just got hung up behind him early and I had to run a line I really didn’t want to run. We had a good car.”

Keith Craft lodged a solid 4^th place finish with Odie Green also putting in a strong fifth place finish. James Ward, Clint Baker, Robbie Starnes, Rodney Wing and Lee Davis rounded out the top 10.

37 O'Reilly SUPR Late Models were on hand. Kenny Merchant was the B&K Underground Top Qualifier while Allen Tippen passed 8 cars to claim the Lloyd Wild Jr. Logging Hard Charger award. Ronny Adams, Rob Litton, Kenny Merchant, Robbie Starnes and Odie Green won the heat races with Chris Wall and Lee Davis topping the Last Chance races.

Feature Results:

1. Kenny Merchant

2. Doug Ingalls

3. David Ashley

4. Keith Craft

5. Odie Green

6. James Ward

7. Clint Baker

8. Robbie Starnes

9. Rodney Wing

10. Lee Davis

11. Ricky Ingalls

12. Allen Tippen

13. Tom Wiggins

14. Jon Mitchell

15. Ray Ingalls

16. Curt Lipsey

17. Tommy Surrett

18. Ronny Adams

19. Chris Wall

20. Jason Ingalls

21. Rob Litton

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