By: Richie Murray – USAC Media
Speedway, Indiana (May 18, 2021)………Being a Rookie on the USAC AMSOIL National Sprint Car trail is a challenge on many fronts for any driver who takes on the task of a full season for the initial time.
Facing stiff competition and several successive nights and weeks on the road, away from home, are a way of life, and are to be expected, throughout a rigorous schedule that ranges from coast-to-coast across the nation.
Now mix-in the yet unmentioned aspect of trying to learn a completely new discipline by shedding the wing and going without one, and the learning curve becomes a little more obtuse.
That’s the battle Paul Nienhiser has taken head-on in 2021.
Nienhiser, the 2019 MOWA champion with the wing, made the transition during the offseason to take on the USAC schedule with Owensville, Indiana based KO Motorsports.
Thus far, the Chapin, Illinois driver’s first 11 races with USAC have appeared akin to the lines on a Richter scale. Some peaks and some valleys; highwater marks and humbling nights – it’s all part of the process in getting to the top of the game.
Nienhiser enters this weekend’s pair of USAC National Sprint Car events at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, Kan., on May 21-22, after a career-best performance at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway on May 8 with a 5th place feature finish and a 9th place standings in the current series’ points, second best in the Rookie class behind Tanner Thorson (7th).
Nienhiser’s first career sprint car win without the wing of any kind came a week after Eldora during a non-sanctioned race at his home track of Jacksonville (Ill.) Speedway. Not only was it a notable triumph for him personally, being that he lives within a stone’s throw from the racetrack, but it symbolized more of a plan that’s beginning to come to fruition.
“A win is a win; they’re great anywhere,” Nienhiser said. “It wasn’t a USAC win, which is at the top of our list, but I think it gave me a little justification to myself that I can do this.”
One factor Nienhiser has displayed regularly is resiliency. In April, during the second round of Keystone Invasion at Big Diamond Speedway in Pennsylvania, a disastrous night saw him crash in the first turn on his qualifying run. If that wasn’t a rough enough start, after pulling out the backup car, Nienhiser biked in the same exact spot during his heat race, resulting in him flipping hard through turns one and two.
The team called it a night and decided to regroup for the next afternoon’s race on the tour after a season of hard lessons were packed into less than an hour in real time for Nienhiser in regard to where the limits of the racecar are.
“(I learned) how hard you can push the issue in, say, qualifying, and on a heavier track,” Nienhiser said. “In a wing car, you’re carrying more speed and I’m trying to find that threshold, for lack of a better term, and I think I found it at Big Diamond after really trying to throw off a burner in qualifying. I kind of realized I had to dial it back a little bit.”
Nienhiser and KO got dialed back in for the next afternoon at BAPS Motor Speedway in York Haven, Pa., rebounding with a solid 9th place result in the feature following a setback during a heat race incident.
To start the year, Nienhiser remarked that the biggest thing for him was when he looked at the USAC schedule and realized how many tracks he was going to be visiting for the first time. His best performances show him as a quick study, and one who, in time, can pick up those pieces of those past experiences and continuously improve his showing.
For example, Lawrenceburg (7th) and Eldora (5th) are his two best performances of the USAC campaign – two high-speed dirt tracks that Nienhiser has previously competed at with the wing, giving credence that the deeper he gets into the USAC season and seeing tracks for the second and third occasion, Nienhiser may soon rise from competing for top-fives and top-tens to a contending for feature wins.
“At the beginning of the year, there were about three-quarters of the tracks I’ve never been to in my career,” Nienhiser recalled. “I’m looking forward to going back to them after our first run. I feel confident in myself in how we ran the first time around, and that we’ll be really strong the second time out now that we have a place to start as far as the chassis goes.”
Nienhiser notes the on-the-fly adjustments as being a critical part of the game, and practically having to learn and re-train his brain from the instincts and habits that have been ingrained in him during his time behind the wheel of a wing sprint car for the past several years.
“Everything that I think of in the racecar seems to be backwards,” Nienhiser admitted. “As far as like shock setups and things, especially in the longer races where the track changes a lot, I’m not as adept at changing my shock knobs inside the car, but I think I’m getting better at that.”
With his first win without a wing and first career top-five USAC finish in his pocket by mid-May, Nienhiser’s stock is on the rise.
“The trend looks pretty good for us so, hopefully, we’re past most of those growing pains and we can just be making tweaks from here on out. It’s just a testament to where we’re at and I think it’s only going to get better.”
Tickets will be available at the gate on each race day. However, tickets can also be purchased in advance at www.TracPass.com. One-day general admission tickets are on sale now for $25. Two-day general admission tickets are $45. Tickets for children aged 12-15 are $10 per day while kids aged 11 and under are admitted for free.
Pit passes are available at the track as well as on www.TracPass.com. Pit passes are $30 for members and $35 for non-members. Two-day pit passes can be purchased for $60. One-day pit passes for children aged 6 and under are $15.
Both nights, registration and pit gates open at 3pm CDT with the grandstands/ticket office opening at 5pm and hot laps at 6:30pm, immediately followed by qualifying and racing. Friday’s action will also include E-Mods and Mod Lites, while Saturday’s event card will have the E-Mods.
For more information on the event, visit USAC’s official website at www.USACracing.com. You can also visit the race promoter’s website at www.trackenterprises.com or by calling their office at (217) 764-3200. You may check out the track’s website directly by clicking www.lakesidespeedway.net or by calling at (913) 299-9206.