Casey Mack claims Norman County Raceway win
By Mike Spieker
The NOSA Sprint Cars roared into Norman County Raceway for Thursday Night Thunder at the Ada, MN 3/8th mile, presented by BASF. Heat race winners Austin Pierce and Wade Nygaard started second and third, respectively, while East Grand Forks, Minnesota’s Casey Mack led the field to the green.
On the ensuing restart defending NCR race winner, Lee Grosz, sliced his way from fourth to second and set his sights on the Paradis Inc. #8 of Mack. Despite having a 360c.i. engine under the hood, Grosz reeled in Mack and made the pass for the lead on 15.
Grosz immediately built up a comfortable 10 car length lead and looked to have the race in hand, but as the race wound down Mack found his groove. With Nygaard in tow, Mack quickly began chasing down the #4J. Mack caught Grosz with just five laps to go and the two young veterans raced side by side for the lead. Mack rode the low side of the speedway while Grosz drove up on the extreme high line. The bottom proved to be the faster line as Mack rocketed off the low side of turn two and took the lead for good down the backstretch with three laps to go.
Nygaard then entered the battle for the runner-up position with Grosz, which allowed Mack to drive off with the lead and the win as he cashed in on his first-ever NCR victory and second of 2015. Grosz narrowly held off Nygaard for second, while Greg Nikitenko and Pierce rounded out the top five.
“This is awesome!” said Mack in KRJB/KRJM/KKCQ Victory Lane. “I’ve loved this race track from the first time I came here.”
“I saw Lee up top and he got by there in turn four and just drove off,” continued Mack. “So I went up high to try his line and started to reel him back in and was able to get him back.”
“I looked at the lap board with eight to go and I was feeling pretty good,” said Grosz after the race. “Then with six to go, I kind of slid off of turn two and lost a ton ground. I knew Mack would be coming after I slid off the track so I tried to take his line down low, but I just couldn’t make it work. I had to go back to the top or else I was going to get passed for second. Mack obviously had the fastest car there at the end and congrats to him on the win.”