Team Crown entered the week with hopes of running well in two shows. They delivered a top 5 and a top 10 running with some of the best in the area and the country!
Thursday July 8th Redwood Speedway hosted the JSTS races for the first time. Team Crown and driver Jody Rosenboom were able to make the first a good one. “Any time we go to a track where they don’t normally race our class, and a lot of the other drivers don’t race there, we feel it’s to our advantage”, says Jason. “I’ve been fortunate over all the years of my involvement to have raced at a lot of different tracks with good drivers and learned so much from those times. Jody is the same. He’s been to so many different tracks in his career, and he adapts pretty well in most cases. We just feel like we hold our own destiny a lot of times at shows like that with many of the others only racing a few tracks over most of their careers.” With a poor draw, Jody would have to make up ground in the heat race to have a good starting spot in the feature. By heats end, he would wind up 3rd which would give them a 3rd place starting spot in the A feature. Quickly moving to 2nd place, Jody was unable to catch the leader and would settle for a 2nd place finish for the night. “The motor kept getting hot all night as we’d get laps on it. I felt like I could run pretty decent until it would lose some of it’s power when the temps rose over 220. Anytime you run 2nd to a guy like Tony Bruce, you can’t hang your head about that. I’m happy with the result!” states Jody.
Saturday would bring in the professionals and the ASCS National series to I90 Speedway in Hartford, SD. “I learned to race at this track, and I feel pretty comfortable that we can run with anyone over here.” Jody says. “We got lucky with the draw and with some bad luck for the guy starting on the pole, we were able to move up and start from his position which is what we needed. I knew if I could just lead the first lap, we could win the heat race and move directly to the feature which is huge. Luckily everything worked out for us and we were able to achieve the transfer spot.” A 10th place start and a pass here and there either forward or backward is what the team would see for 11 of the scheduled 30 laps that were completed. Jason says, “We were about like most of the field out there. If you had the good line through the corner, you could pass if you were in position, but if you were in a different part of the track trying to find a line around someone, you were in jeopardy of being passed yourself. We weren’t good, but we weren’t bad either. We’ll take an 8th place finish with the best in the business.” In the end, Mother Nature won out and claimed the final 19 laps of the race.
Team Crown had a successful weekend in all and looks to the coming weeks and races to build on their results!
