(Bill W) May 26, 2015 – Bryan Clauson will be back behind the wheel of the Matt Wood Racing #17w this week with the FVP National Sprint League. The series will make their “March through Missouri” with stops at the Saint Francois County Raceway near Farmington Thursday and the Randolph County Raceway near Moberly on Friday. The team will head to the Knoxville Raceway in Iowa on Saturday as well.
The Noblesville, Indiana driver has been busy this month with a run at the Indy 500 aboard the Jonathan Byrd’s Racing #88. In his absence, Justin Henderson drove the car to a fourth place finish in Jackson, Minnesota. “It rained a couple times for me (events in Jacksonville, Illinois and Huset’s Speedway in South Dakota), and we only missed one race (with the NSL),” says Bryan. “Justin was able to keep our owner points up there, and I didn’t miss out on too many, so it worked out o.k.”
Unfortunately, for Bryan he was caught up in an accident almost before the race got started last Sunday at Indy. “It was good to be back there,” he says. “Obviously, it wasn’t the month we hoped or dreamt for. It’s been a process putting everything together. We’ll sit down and look at what went well, and what didn’t go so well. We’ll see what we achieved on the Byrd side of business things and what went well on the driver’s side of things too. We’ll reevaluate about next year and go from there.”
After sweating out pole day, it was tough not to get to compete. “We knew we probably didn’t have a car to compete for a win or maybe even a top ten,” says Bryan. “We knew we had a mid-pack car and we were trying to survive and do the best we could. We just kind of got put in a bad spot…maybe because we didn’t have the speed to be further up. That led to the crash.”
Bryan put an opportunity together where fans received tickets for both Indy and Kokomo Speedway Sunday night, where he competed in a sprint car. It also included a chartered bus trip. “The deal we put together on the fan side of things was really cool,” he says. “We had about 90 people on the bus. We had a number of fans who had never been to a dirt race, and we had a number of fans who had never been to Indy. It was a good way to expose them to another form of racing.”
Things at Kokomo went well. Bryan charged to a second place finish. “I hadn’t raced there with my Dad since probably 2009,” he says. “We were starting from scratch a little bit. Things went really well. We were a little snug in the feature, but we were good. We had a shot to win it, we just came up a little short. We could have used another lap or two.”
Bryan will get his second look of the year at Farmington on Thursday. “We were there earlier in the year and got to hot lap,” he says. “It’s a unique place. It has two different ends to it. We didn’t get to learn a whole lot before the rain came and it was pretty wet in hot laps. We got a little bit of a feel for it though, and I’ve watched a lot of video. I’m just excited to get back in a sprint car.”
Matt Wood Racing would like to thank: Elk Grove Ford, Quick Lane, Fuel Safe, Schoenfeld, Curb Records and Vortex Wings!
To follow the Matt Wood Racing’s progress online, visit www.ColeWoodRacing.com!
Follow Bryan Clauson online at www.BryanClauson.com!
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