In Super Unlimited, Team Davidson Racing had the car and the driver to beat. Driver Brian Frisselle had been putting up the fastest lap times of the weekend, but the car blew its engine in qualifying, which resulted in a DNF. The team had another engine, and a long night of wrenching put the car back on track and Frisselle last on grid.
By the entrance to the Esses on lap one, Frisselle was in fourth. Jimmy Casey wasn’t wasting any time, and used the clear track ahead to put a gap on the field. However, the collision in Turn 1 in the Super Touring 1 brought out the double-yellows and pace cars. By the time the yellows came out, Frisselle was in second and James Devenport was third.
At the restart, Frisselle got around Casey, took the lead and began putting down fast laps. Devenport also got around Casey. However, just a few laps later, the BMW-powered Davidson Racing Norma chassis suffered another engine failure, which put the lead in Devenport’s hands.
“Obviously, the defending champ had some issues,” Devenport said. “We’ve never run against (Frisselle), but we wanted to. That thing is a rocket ship. We do it in corners and brakes, they do it on a lot of horsepower. Unfortunately, they broke so we didn’t really get to see how it played out.”
Driving a Radical SR8, second-place finisher Jimmy Casey was able to narrow the lead to 1.6 seconds, but couldn’t quite catch Devenport.
“We had the power we wanted for that race, so we were reeling in Devenport out of the corners, but he just had so much more aero,” Casey said. “When we saw the Davidson car go off, we thought there was a real chance, and it lit a fire under me to go after him harder.”
Chris Hamilton, who started from started from pole, hung on through the restarts and the lapped traffic to take third place in a Suzuki Hayabusa-powered Radical SR3.
“I’m just glad to be here. I can’t believe I’m up on the podium with a little car like I got,” Hamilton said. “There was lots of traffic. There were lots of wrecks and accidents and a bunch of flags. Everybody drove really well that was I was around. Everybody navigated the traffic really well.”
