Wade Nygaard Claims First Victory of 2017 at Cedar Lake Speedway!
NEW RICHMOND, Wis. (April 25, 2017) – Entering the weekend the Nygaard Motorsports crew had a few options of where they could race. They choose to head east to Wisconsin to compete with the UMSS Sprints at Cedar Lake.
That was the right decision.
Wade picked up his first victory of the season in dramatic fashion with a last corner, last lap pass for the win.
The driver of the Auto Finance Super Center No. 9N began the night starting in the fourth position in heat two. Wade drove his way to the front fairly quickly, eventually taking the lead and the win.
“The car was awesome in the heat race,” he said. “We didn’t change to car too much for the challenge race because it didn’t look like the track was going to change too much. But it actually took rubber on the first lap and we ended up being too tight, but we got lucky enough to win it.”
With two preliminary race wins under his belt, Wade was poised to capture the 20-lap feature win as well. With rubber already laid down earlier in the night, the crew set up the car expecting the same for the feature.
“The watertruck actually washed off the rubber that was laid down. At the start of the race I ran the middle of the track expecting to find the rubber and it never came,” said Wade. “At the same time I was watching Chris [Graf] get further ahead of me so I finally decided I better go up to the top.”
Once Wade got up to the cushion, he began reeling in the Glencoe, Minn. driver.
“I didn’t think I would be able to catch Graf unless he got slowed up by traffic and I got through the traffic really well. It just so happened that both things happened,” he said.
When the white flag flew, Wade was still chasing Graf, but had a run on him entering the final set of turns. Wade drove his Rider/J&J machine deep into the inside of Graf and completed a textbook slide job to take the lead exiting turn four. It came down to a drag race at the line where Wade edged out Graf by a mere 0.019 seconds.
The win marked Wade’s 258th of his career and first win at Cedar Lake since 2006.
Weather pending, the Nygaard Motorsports team will be in action either at Park Jefferson Speedway or Knoxville Raceway.
Season Stats:
Races: 3
Wins: 1
Top Fives: 2
Top Tens: 2
Heat Wins: 2
Upcoming Events:
April 29th: TBD
May 5th: River Cities Speedway – NOSA Sprints
