Plover, WI – Gabe Sommers Racing took part in one of the ASA Midwest Tour’s crown jewels this past Saturday, mixing it up with the best of the Midwest in the Jim Sauter Classic 200. Worth a whopping $10,005 to win, Dells Raceway Park was the place to be for race fans and drivers alike.
With the title fight in their control for the moment, The No. 15 crew looked to stretch their points lead by being a cohesive unit in the shop and at the racetrack. They would unload the familiar silver and black Ford Mustang off the top of the hauler ready to roll for the opening round of practice. Uncharacteristically, Sommers would run the fifth most laps of any car in the first of two practice sessions, taking forty trips around the ⅓ mile bullring before settling for third place on the time charts. With plenty of notes gained, the Travis Sauter led crew would go to work, trying to improve on the raw speed in their platform. On the stopwatch, Sommers would pick up 0.061 in lap time, but fell to eleventh place on the leaderboard of the 25 cars that took to the track in the second and final round of practice.
Strapping in for qualifying with a few more changes done to the No. 15, Gabe would confidently roll out on the track and lay down a blistering 13.410 second lap time, missing out on fast time by just three thousandths of a second. The over two tenth improvement in time from practice to qualifying was well received, and set up GSR for a solid starting spot in the feature inside of the invert. Before the program could continue on to the feature event, the ASA Midwest Tour drivers would split into three separate heat/qualifier races. Gabe’s second place qualifying effort would place him in the “Even Heat”, which he would simply use as an extra practice, where he would roll around Dells Raceway Park for eight laps, finishing fifth.
Feeling more confident in their race pace after searching for daylight in the heat race, Sommers and his crew would prepare for two hundred laps of action. With a fourteen car invert, that would slot the No. 15 into a thirteenth starting spot for the Jim Sauter Classic 200. The field would go green for just five laps on their initial run before a quartet of cars stopped in turn two would slow the field early. Soon enough the track was clear and racecars began to echo through the trees surrounding Dells Raceway Park once again. On lap 24/200, another spin would bring the field to caution as Gabe would jump up inside the top ten for the first time during the feature. From there, the No. 15 would flirt with the inside of the top ten before contact resulting in a spin with the car in front of him would send Gabe to the rear of the field on Lap 44.
Restarting from the 19th position, the strategy to save tires was now mostly out of the picture. Gifted with an almost 50 lap green flag run immediately after the Lap 44 caution, Gabe would slice and dice his way up a whopping ten positions, finding himself in ninth place when the yellow flag dropped over the field for debris on lap Lap 92/200. Almost the entire field, including Sommers, would head to pit road under the protection of the controlled caution. With five caution laps of time to make adjustments, Travis Sauter and his crew would head to work and get the No. 15 squared away for the second half of the 200 lapper. The pieces were coming together for Gabe, rolling up to the seventh position by the halfway mark, but didn’t stop there. Contact between fourth and fifth would allow Sommers to squeak into the top five for the first time, and he wouldn’t fall out of it for the remainder of the night.
A long green flag run from laps 119 to 172 would come to a screeching halt when a lapped racecar made contact with the third place driver, setting up the field for a mad dash to the finish. On the restart, Gabe would get free and clear into fourth place, but the green flag conditions were short lived. With only 17 laps remaining, two drivers would be collected in a spin off of turn two, washing away the few car lengths of space that Sommers had mustered up. Choosing the inside line, once again Sommers worked his way from fifth back to fourth with just ten laps remaining, but received a heavy bumper into turn one, sending him up the racetrack and sliding back a spot. From there, the laps would click off with Gabe able to hang on for a top five finish and pad his points further in the championship standings.
With a 32 point cushion in the ASA Midwest Tour standings, GSR will look to continue their hot streak at their next pair of events in September. Head to Dells Raceway Park for Alive For 5 Series action on September 15, or Elko Speedway for ASA Midwest Tour racing on September 21!