Harned Shows Championship Form!!!

Week #4 of the Sure Fire Racing League Southern National Track Championship was held On Friday night Sept. 30th in front of a packed house. The fans were anticipating another fierce duel between TJ Christ and last weeks winner Charlie Kuzma. As it turned out the participants were different but the battle was almost as intense.

Happy Hour ended with New Jersey's Charlie Kuzma posting the fastest lap of the session with a time of 13.599 followed by Jay Harned in his Ted's Hot Dogs #44 with a time of 13.639. Qualifying would see Eric Nordhoff put his #22 on pole with a time of 13.653 followed by the #29 of defending series champion Clifton Cockrell.

Based on full field inversion Mark Koschik led the field to green but was quickly overtaken by Christ who would assume command of the field. Lap #16 would be ironic in that the #16 of Darryl Tiezzi and the #85 of Trevor Malone would make contact and send Malone around bringing out the nights first yellow. Christ would lead the field to green this time with Harned to his outside, on the break Christ would flex his muscle and put his #55 out front yet again and would hold a comfortable lead until lap #29 when Michael Allen made contact with the outside wall and came down into Nordhoff sending the #22 hard into the inside wall ending his night in a cloud of smoke. Under this caution the leaders would pit and this proved to be a turning point on 2 fronts. First Kuzma was issued a black flag for pitting in front of Allen and second Harned was able to assume command of the field.

Harned took the green flag and brought the field up to speed while Kuzma served his stop and go penalty. Upon being cleared from pit road he quickly got up to speed and put full effort into staying in front of the field. Harned was able to make a quick move to avoid contact and remain under green. Tiezzi was close behind in 2nd but Christ was soon going to work on him to advance his position and on lap #48 he was able to pass Tiezzi for 2nd and set his sights on Harned and redemption for last week. It did not take long for Christ to cut into Harned's lead but the #55 was showing signs of a handling issue. After several laps of effort Harned was able to scoot around the #29 of Cockrell putting his a lap down and opening a little breathing room over Christ for a few laps before the #55 began to once again reel him in. As the laps went on the handling issues for Christ worsened. His car appeared to be faster than Harned but many times he nearly lost the back end under power and while he was able to get close to the #44's bumper he was never able to mount a serious challenge for the win. Worse yet on lap #124 he finally lost the war and spun the #55 bringing out the 3rd and final yellow of the night allowing Harned to claim victory under caution for his 2nd career SFRL Modified win of his career. Allen bounced back for a strong 2nd place finish.

1. #44 Jay Harned

2. #59 Michael Allen

3. #113 Charlie Kuzma

4. #55 TJ Christ

5. #16 Darryl Tiezzi