Brian Brown and Casey Friedrichsen were feature winners in Friday night's season-opening Bull Haulers Brawl event at Jackson Motorplex. Both drivers led the first lap and the final lap of their feature, but were forced to rebound after being passed early in the race on an electric track.
Brown scored his first victory of the season and first at Jackson Motorplex since May 2017 during the $5,000-to-win Northern Outlaw Sprint Association main event, which was the first ever at the track.
“I got to traffic the first time and I was way too cautious,” he said. “Skylar (Prochaska) showed us how hard to run. Hats off to Skylar. He did a great job. The No. 2ks team did great as well. A great podium and we were lucky enough to come out on top.”
Brown paced the field for the first five laps of the 25-lap main event before Prochaska took over the top spot by using the bottom in turns one and two on Lap 6. Prochaska increased his advantage before a caution on Lap 9 set up a double-file restart. Brown quickly reclaimed the lead and pulled away in traffic before a caution on Lap 23 bunched the field up for a late dash to the finish. It was to no avail as Brown won by 2.008 seconds.
Prochaska was the runner up and he beamed on the front stretch during the post-race interviews.
“It’s just good to be standing on the front stretch again,” he said. “We got (Brown) in lapped traffic. That was fun by itself. He had better starts than we did.”
Matt Juhl placed third.
Brooke Tatnell advanced from 14th to finish fourth in the DeWall Racing #16 to earn the Hard Charger Award and Justin Henderson maneuvered from 12th to fifth.
Brown and Prochaska were up front from the start of the night as each driver set quick time in their qualifying group. James Broty, Tim Estenson, Nick Ranten and Jack Croaker picked up heat race victories. Nick Omdahl was the B Main winner.
Friedrichsen led the first four laps of the RaceSaver Sprint Car Series feature, which was shortened from 20 laps to 15 laps because of nearby inclement weather. As traffic neared Friedrichsen tested a higher groove in turns three and four, which opened the door for Mike Moore to drive by on Lap 5.
Moore kept Freidrichsen at bay by approximately three quarters of a second for most of the remainder of the feature before he got tight in traffic, pushing up the track in turns one and two with two laps remaining. Friedrichsen capitalized to regain the lead on Lap 14 and he held on for the triumph by 0.581 of a second.
Clayton Christensen rounded out the podium with Carter Chevalier finishing fourth and Bill Johnson fifth.
Friedrichsen, Jesse Lindberg and Dusty Ballenger were heat race winners.
The next event at Jackson Motorplex is May 25 with the first of three events in the Bank Midwest IMCA Series. That event will feature A modifieds, stock cars, hobby stocks, B modifieds, hornets and sport compacts.