It was a tough start to MOWA Illinois Speedweek for driver Jerrod Hull and the Rockwell American #12 team. The problem was, it never finished either. The last two nights at Jacksonville Speedway Friday and Macon Speedway Saturday were rained out. The Sikeston, Missouri driver was left to ponder his sixth and eleventh place finishes at Highland Speedway and Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, respectively. The team will be off until August 15-17, when they will partake in the three-night, three-track Sprint Invaders Nationals.
Things started well at Highland on Wednesday when Jerrod drew a starting spot outside row one of the heat. “We were able to win the heat,” he says. “After that things didn’t go the way we were planning. We backed up big time in the Dash (3rd to 6th), and we weren’t very good.”
The three-time and defending MOWA champion struggled after starting sixth in the main event. “We were able to get up to fourth,” says Jerrod. “I was able to run with those guys early on. We had a caution come out, and we never were able to get going again. We fell back to sixth. We weren’t happy with that at all, but we had big hopes for Granite City.”
Jerrod struggled in his heat at Granite City on Thursday, driving from fifth to fourth. “That barely locked us into the A main,” he says. “We had to start fifteenth in the feature. The first few laps, we passed some cars.”
That’s when the race became one-lane, and he would checker 11th. “I knew it was going to take rubber as black as it was,” says Jerrod of the track. “If it hadn’t, we could have done a little more. We were to twelfth by then, and we were able to get by one more car after it took rubber and that was it. It was follow the leader after that.”
Unfortunately, a team who needed to get back on track at Jacksonville Friday, never got the chance. “We were disappointed big-time,” says Jerrod. “We’ve never had that rough a start to Speedweek. We had big plans for Jacksonville and Macon, but the weather had bigger plans.”
The Sprint Invaders Nationals will open at the Bloomfield Speedway in Iowa on Friday, August 15, before moving to the 34 Raceway in West Burlington on the 16th and Quincy Raceways in Illinois on the 17th. The ASCS-Warrior region will co-sanction in Quincy. “I think we’re going to switch cars and do three days of 360 racing coming up here in August after the Nationals with the Sprint Invaders,” says Jerrod. “We’d like to make some changes and get going better, because we weren’t very good last weekend.”
Jerrod and the #12 team would like to thank: Rockwell American, Midland Performance, Super Shox, Sebastian Sand Blasting & Powder Coating, Inc., Chuck’s Small Engines, Don Hamilton, HRP, Lighthouse Christian Center, Logo Daddy, Hoosier Tire, Simpson, Weld, Automotive Machine, Maxim and Heartland Trailer Manufacturing.
- administrator on Jul 29, 2014
- Article Date: 7/29/2014 by Bill Wright