FARRELL FEARLESSLY, FEVERISHLY FLIES TO FIRST MASCS WIN

Topics:  Ryan Farrell

Matt Panure
Mid American Stock Car Series
April 15, 2012

Loves Park, Ill. (April 15, 2012) – Mid-American Stock Car Series veterans and past Champions may want to grab a pen and paper and start jotting down some notes. On Sunday afternoon at Rockford Speedway there was a new kid in town teaching them some lessons.

Rookie Ryan Farrell opened the 20th MASCS season in boisterous fashion by out-timing the field for the 35th Annual Spring Classic by nearly two tenths of a second. If that statement wasn’t enough, Farrell cruised through the pack in the 50-lap main event, picking off competitors using the less-than-preferred inside line. He snared the top spot before the halfway point and went unchallenged to the end.

“That was more than you can ever expect,” the 24-year-old from East Troy, Wis., said. “This only happens once or twice in a career and today was that day.”

With a nine-car invert to set the field for the main event, Farrell took the green flag on the inside of row five. With the likes of Lyle Nowak, Bill Prietzel and James Swan starting in the preferred outside line in the rows ahead of Farrell, the test began early. Nowak, who won at Rockford last October, dashed to the lead past pole sitter Tom McClintock. Just three laps later Prietzel, Swan, Mark Pluer and Kyle Shear had followed into the top five.

As the front five rode the rim around the top side of the quarter mile, Farrell began an unorthodox march to the front by picking off cars on the bottom line. He moved to seventh on lap six and eight laps later chewed up enough real estate to challenge and overtake Adam Bendzick in sixth. Just two laps later Farrell worked the inside line and swiped fifth from Pluer.

“It’s something you see once or twice a year, where a guy will come through the field on the bottom,” Farrell said. “We thought the car was good enough to pass the medium to slow cars on the bottom, and that’s usually pretty good. In the heat race we got by a couple guys that were pretty stout.”

The heat race run gave Farrell enough confidence to stay on the low line when the first and only caution of the race came out on lap 20. With an adoption of the pick-a-lane, cone restart policy for 2012, the four Mid-American veterans in front of Farrell decided to stay in the comfortable outside line. Farrell wasted no time diving to the inside and restarting alongside Nowak up front.

Once the green dropped, Farrell flexed his muscle on the bottom line and grabbed the lead from Nowak. “I got a little bit of a break on that restart with Lyle. I heard his clutch was slipping a little bit, but I think we had something for him either way,” Farrell said.

Over the final 29 laps of the race Farrell slowly broke away from the rest of the top five. Without a caution, Farrell consistently clicked off the laps en route to his first win in his seventh MASCS start. “It was cruise control to the end. You expect wrecks to happen here, but that didn’t happen today.”

Nowak held on for second, Prietzel finished third, Swan fourth, after changing engines on Saturday night, and Ryan Gutknecht made a late charge to round out the top five.

With the impressive crop of MASCS rookies to bloom in the past years, Farrell’s performance may have been the strongest. Only Kyle Shear in 2007 and Tyler Bauknecht with two wins and a runner-up finish to Lyle Nowak in 2010 have given the veterans something to ponder seriously.

For Farrell to dominate at perhaps one of the most difficult tracks in the Midwest, added just a little bit extra sweetness to the situation.

“It’s a tradition,” Farrell said of Rockford Speedway. “You come here every spring, and to say I won a feature here – it’s unbelievable. You daydream about it, but you don’t think it’ll ever happen like it did today.”

Farrell admits he may have had a bit of an advantage having raced in a Mid-American style car at Slinger last season and racing a super stock at the venue in past seasons. He said the tracks and lines are very similar, giving him a few extra notes to work off in only his second visit to Rockford.

Although Farrell races under the Dan Church Racing banner, his ties are stronger to another MASCS competitor – one who won his fifth title last season. Through three of those titles with Adam Berge racing, Farrell was a mainstay on the pit crew for James Swan. Not surprisingly, Swan was one of the first visitors to Victory Lane to congratulate Farrell.

“When he pulled up that was just awesome. I was actually getting a little emotional there,” Farrell said of Swan’s gesture. “To be able to race with him is one big step and now to occasionally be a little faster than him is unbelievable. He’s the standard in these cars and now and then you meet that.”

“That was totally awesome,” Swan said of Farrell’s performance. “When I saw him take the inside lane I thought, ‘oh no, I’m in trouble now.’ Sure enough we went into turn one, I watched him go and he did everything he could without wrecking anybody.”

Did Swan see this coming when Farrell helped him capture three MASCS championships? “Not back then,” Swan said. “We didn’t think he paid enough attention. He would come to the shop and just look at stuff. He’s an engineer so he looked at things different than everyone else.”

Swan was not the only mentor-figure swelling with pride in Farrell. Dan Church, who last year finished fifth in MASCS standings and grabbed Rookie of the Year honors was a proud car owner as evening fell on Sunday.

“It’s been great,” Church said of his relationship with Farrell. “Between him and the group of guys that helped him with his street stock at Slinger we’ve had top of the line cars that are ready to go every weekend.”

While Church plans to chase an ambitious Late Model schedule in 2012, he’ll be keeping a close eye on his MASCS ride from last season.

“I’m really confident about rookie of the year,” Church answered when asked of his expectations of Farrell this season. “I think top three in points is a good possibility. I think he’ll definitely be a front-runner in the series this year.”

Farrell wasn’t as quick to jump to that conclusion, still basking in his Rockford Speedway victory.

“We’re going to a lot of tracks I’ve never been to. It’s possible we can go through and run like that again, but you can’t expect that. We’ll take it a little bit at a time and try not to make mistakes.”

The next stop for Mid-American’s 20th season is a return to Golden Sands Speedway on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28. The series last raced at Golden Sands on May 22, 2009 when eventual Champion Paul Neisius opened that season after three rainouts with a feature win.

For more information on the Golden Sands Speedway please visit www.goldensandsspeedway.com

For more information about the Mid-American Stock Car Series, including results, the 2012 schedule, standings and driver information visit www.midamericanracing.com.