Lucas Oil Off Road Racing

Austin Kembrell in the No. 88 Superlite and Patrick Clark in the No. 25 machine ran several laps right together putting fender to fender during the Championship Cup. We saw them more than once leaning into one another as they bounced and slid around the fast track, battling for who would take second place from the other. Clark would prevail.

Ryan Hagy was leading the Superlite race on Saturday but would stand his car up hard and then roll it over in Turn 4. Drivers come in fast and have to set up for one of the two exit lines coming out of this turn and into a series of whoops or small table top jumps.

When the checkered flag waved, the No. 19 Pro buggy piloted by Justin “Bean” Smith would dominate over all others, marking the third year the buggies have beaten the trucks in this race.

No. 37 RJ Anderson clenched the Superlite Cup win and took the prize money. With a number of spectacular crashes during the race, the field of cars diminished a bit. Anderson would keep pushing towards the front and once he got there held on, even after the cars were bunched up again during the competition yellow.

In a class versus class cup race, the Pro Lite Unlimiteds were pitted against the open-wheel Pro Buggy Unlimiteds. The two classes would start one behind the other with the buggies in back, and the drivers in reverse qualifying order to make things interesting. Throughout the race, the classes would swap leads.

On the last lap of the Pro Lite versus Pro Buggy race Casey Currie had a bit of an issue with his front body clip flying up. He commented after the race that he knew he just had to blindly estimate the curve around the final Turn 5 and make it to the finish. He did so and was able to take third place in this hotly contested race.

The last Challenge Cup race was the Pro 2 Unlimiteds versus the Pro 4 Unlimiteds and the starting field was a congested one. The 2WD trucks would get a half lap head-start as it is the slower of the two classes. Adrian Cenni worked his 4WD to the race lead at one point but was black-flagged for a track incident. His truck, like many, lost a number of body panels that day.

Carl Renezeder again raced Pro 4 and Pro 2 for 2011, and won the Pro 4 Championship. For the Challenge Cup, he chose to race his No. 17 2WD truck. He and No. 99 Robby Woods, also racing a Pro 2 truck, would go a number of laps practically right on top of each other. They swapped spots and seemed stuck together through turns and over the jumps.

A Pro 4 truck would win the Cup race for the third year when No. 54 Rob Naughton took the checkered flag.