Brownstown Speedway
Chips fall Janowski's way in Brownstown opener
By James Essex
DirtonDirt.com correspondent
Joe Janowski heads to victory at Brownstown. (schaefer11.smugmug.com)
BROWNSTOWN, Ind. (March 15) — Rallying from his 10th starting spot, Joe Janowski of Carmel, Ind., captured Brownstown Speedway’s season-opening Late Model feature Saturday, repeating his opening-night victory from a year ago. | Slideshow
On a night when three frontrunners had trouble, Janowski took the lead from a surprising John Gardner Jr. of Germantown Hills, Ill., on the 11th lap and held off Gardner and Tim Prince of Heltonville, Ind., late in the race for the 25-lap victory.
“We probably had a fourth-place car tonight,” Janowski said in victory lane. “(MasterSbilt Race Cars employee) Cody Mahoney came over and helped up out, he made some adjustments and got us going better, this is a new MasterSbilt car. I had sold a lot of my stuff last year, it feels good to get back behind the wheel.
“I know it was full moon tonight when those top three cars wrecked. I thought I had a real good shot at winning tonight. That was some tough-luck for those guys, they were the class of the field. The track wasn’t too bad at all, there was a few rough spots out there, but with the winter we have had, I think the track crew did a great job preparing the track.”
Prince led at the outset before Duane Chamberlain of Richmond, Ind., took over on lap three. Prince and Marty O’Neal formed a three-car breakaway at the front of the pack with Chamberlain looking for his first victory at the quarter-mile oval.
After the first of three cautions on the eighth lap, O’Neal took second from Prince just before Chamberlain got sideways in turn one, collecting the cars of O’Neal and Prince. Chamberlain and O’Neal were done while Prince pitted and rejoined the field on the tail.
Gardner inherited the lead with the Janowski moving past on the restart and going on to lead the rest of the way. Gardner and Prince fell short in trying to catch him late in the race. Steve Barnett of Franklin, Ind., and Mike Meyers of Fayetteville, Ohio, rounded out the top five on a pleasant late-winter evening.
Notes: Janowski’s fourth career Brownstown victory came in the Alan Magner-owned MasterSbilt with a Bill Tranter Racing Engines. Sponsors include Borgman Farms, Bob Poynter Ford, 31 Auto Group, C&S Prototyping, Becks Seeds, Prudential Insurance, Kendall Farms, Print Worx and NKA Insurance. … Fourth-place finisher Steve Barnett debuted a new Rayburn Race Car. The four-time track champion (tied with Jim Curry for most all-time at Brownstown) has 50 career victories at the track where he started racing in 1976. … Billy Gullion of Waverly, Ohio, made his Brownstown debut. Despite arriving late to the track, he was running fourth in the main event when he struck a tire barrier in turn two ending his night with front-end damage to his car. … Brownstown hosts the 17th annual Indiana Icebreaker for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series on March 22, paying $10,000-to-win.
Brownstown Speedway: (1) Joe Janowski, (2) John Gardner Jr., (3) Tim Prince (4) Steve Barnett, (5) Mike Myers, (6) Chad Stapleton, (7) Greg Kendall, (8) Bob Gardner, (9) Rick Robinson, (10) Adam Bowman, (11) Duane Chamberlain, (12) Marty O’Neal, (13) Billy Gullion.
