FT. WORTH, Texas — When the dust settled on a slide job filled SawBlade.com feature Friday night at the Texas Motor Speedway, Australia’s Scott Bogucki capped off his season with the Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series presented by the MAVTV Motorsports Network with victory at Tony Stewart presents the VANKOR Texas Sprint Car Nationals.
“This is unbelievable,” Bogucki said. “I’ve got so many great people behind me with SawBlade.com, Scotty McDonald at Dissolvalloy, Lee with Ostrich Racing Engine – this is for them. We’ve been struggling lately, so before I went out Scotty’s like hey, it’s the end of the year, if you get it done let her rip but if you don’t turn her over, I’ll hit you with the four-wheeler. I didn’t quite turn it over, but it was some fun.”
Taking the lead on lap threee from Brandon Hanks, Bogucki kept pace through several restarts with the No. 28 finally getting held up in slower traffic at the race’s midpoint.
With Tony Stewart in hot pursuit, the two drivers began going at it for the lead with Stewart wheeling his Rush Truck Centers No. 14 to the point on lap 20. Trading lines and slide jobs through the next few laps, Bogucki regained the lead on lap 23 as 18th starting, Aaron Reutzel, raced into the mix.
On the battle with Stewart, Bogucki stated.
“I knew he had a run. It’s hard sometimes to tell when you’re leading where to go, but it didn’t look clean enough to have rubbered up down there,” Bogucki said. “I don’t know if he was diamonding the corner or what, all I knew was I had to make myself as wide as I could be, but it was a lot of fun getting to slide Tony like that.”
Using slower cars as picks with Stewart and Reutzel now in pursuit, Bogucki looked to have everything in hand. Rounding the final two turns, however, the cautions lights suddenly blinked on as McKenna Haase began helicoptering her No. 55 through turn two with a pack of cars bearing down on her.
Setting up a green-white-checkered finish, Bogucki was able to keep pace as Stewart and Reutzel began racing each other for the runner-up spot.
Able to take the position, Reutzel was too late to mount a charge as Scott Bogucki raced to his fourth career victory with the Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series presented by the MAVTV Motorsports Network.
Reutzel was the night’s hard charger with 16 cars passed after having to race out of a B-Feature. Stewart made up the night’s podium with Blake Hahn coming up to finish fourth. Winning Thursday’s prelim, Iowa’s Terry McCarl capped the weekend with a fifth-place finish.
The finish:
Feature (30 Laps): 1. 28-Scott Bogucki, [5]; 2. 51-Aaron Reutzel, [18]; 3. 14T-Tony Stewart, [3]; 4. 52-Blake Hahn, [7]; 5. 4-Terry McCarl, [2]; 6. 44-Sammy Swindell, [4]; 7. 11-Roger Crockett, [8]; 8. 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr, [12]; 9. 17W-Harli White, [6]; 10. 95-Matt Covington, [11]; 11. 74B-Jake Bubak, [19]; 12. 84-Brandon Hanks, [1]; 13. 44M-Chris Martin, [21]; 14. 47X-Dylan Westbrook, [20]; 15. 24D-Danny Sams III, [15]; 16. 55-McKenna Haase, [17]; 17. 79-Kevin Ramey, [22]; 18. 33C-Casey Carter, [25]; 19. 11X-Tyler Courtney, [10]; 20. 14-Jordon Mallett, [9]; 21. 2X-Tucker Doughty, [24]; 22. J2-John Carney II, [14]; 23. 23-Seth Bergman, [13]; 24. 22-Sean McClelland, [16]; 25. 21P-Robbie Price, [23]