BY: Chris Santos
10/24/22…Gas City, Indiana: Friday Night, Kyle Shipley would kick off the final weekend of his 2022 season with the Fall Festival of Speed at Gas City Speedway. A strong field of 40 Non Winged 410 Sprint Cars would be in the pit area ready to kick off the weekend on Friday Night.
Kyle would kick his night off in qualifying as he would roll out for qualifying in the first of 5 groups. Kyle would lay down a super fast lap that would put him Quick Time in his group, and overall in qualifying and set himself up nicely for the rest of the night. “Quick Time overall In qualifying.”
He would roll off for the first heat race in the 2nd position on the outside of the front row. Tye Mihocko and Kyle would battle in the heat race. Ultimately Tye would get the win and Kyle would come home in the 2nd spot and lock himself into the feature event.
The feature event would see Kyle roll off from the pole position. Starting 1st, Kyle would struggle early on as he would start to fall back through the field. He would end up getting run off the track and falling back. Eventually he would pull off and end his night there. “Started pole was falling back and then got run off the track on about lap 7. I eventually pulled off.”
Saturday Night, Kyle would once again return to Gas City Speedway for Night 2 of the Fall Festival of Speed and the final night of the 2022 race season for Kyle Shipley. This time 45 410 Non Winged Sprint Cars would roll into the pit area ready to go for Night number 2.
This time, Kyle would be in the 4th of 5 groups in qualifying. He would continue to have great speed in qualifying as he would lay down another great lap that would put him Quick Time in his group and overall! “Went Quick Time overall again.”
For his heat race, Kyle would roll off from the 3rd position on the inside of row 2. He would show speed in the heat race as he would end up gaining a spot. When the checkered flag fell, he would finish in the 2nd spot, and again lock himself into the feature event.
In the feature event, Kyle would start on the inside of row 5 in the 9th starting position. Once again, he would fall back through the field. This time he would stay on track and finish the feature as he would come home in the 15th spot. “Quick time over all again. Something is happening, Im going from being fast as heck until the first caution then I seem to lose the handling of the car. I'll do some research and move on to next year.”
Despite the disappointment from Kyle about his weekend, it was a solid weekend to end off the season. He would be one of the fastest cars in Qualifying and heat races against a great field of cars. They will take the positives from this weekend and build off of them while learning from the negatives!
Kyle would like to thank his sponsors; Lifestyle Homes.
Next Race: TBA