On Tuesday night, the Sportsman Street Stock Series made the trip to Indianapolis as they visited the Lucas Oil Raceway. The division’s 2nd race of the season saw 20 cars hit the track for the 75 lap feature event, and it was Jacob Linkiewicz who picked up picked up his 2nd career pole.
Jacob brought the field to the green flag, but it was his brother, James Linkiewicz, who took over the top spot in the early laps. Jacob let him go, and then fell in line as the race got started off with a 53 lap green flag run. The two drivers both slowly started pulling away until the first of three cautions flew on the night. James grabbed the advantage on each restart, including the final restart with 1 lap to go, and he would go on to lead the final 73 laps of the race to pick up the victory.
Jacob would finish right behind his brother for the 2nd spot, after trailing in his tire tracks for the entire race. The 3rd spot on the podium was up in the air until the final lap, where Matt Rolfe and Joe Schaffer were swapping the position back and forth during the restarts. On the final lap, Schaffer got the advantage but coming off turn four, some slight contact from Rolfe would see both cars get a little sideways, where it allowed Travis Warling to sneak into the middle three-wide as they drag raced back to the finish line. Schaffer was able to get his car gathered back up to hang onto 3rd, while Rolfe would come across the line 4th, just ahead of Warling in 5th.
Just outside the top five, Brian Tedeschi picked up a 6th place finish after hanging around the 10th spot for most of the night. Dale Owen ran back in the 14th position until the first caution, and was then able to take advantage of the restarts to finish 7th. Richard Bruce picked up his first career top ten with an 8th place finish after hanging quietly inside the top ten all race long. Evan Sorensen made his way up into the top five, until some slight contact on the final lap dropped him back to 9th, while Mike Whited rounded out the top ten as he also took advantage of the late restarts to move up.
The night belonged to James Linkiewicz though, as he finally broke through to pick up his first career SARA victory in his 117th career start. Prior to his win, James had seven runner-up finishes, but he wasn’t going to settle for 2nd this time.
With a pair of top five finishes to start the season, Joe Schaffer Jr. leads the points standings by 6 points over 2nd place.