Danny O’Brien Scores Come-From-Behind Win At Brockville

Story By: CLAYTON JOHNS / DANNY O’BRIEN RACING – INVERARY, ONT – Danny O’Brien rallied from a heat race mishap and a 16th-place starting spot to score his fourth win of the season at Brockville Ontario Speedway on Saturday night amidst one of the hottest heat waves of the summer. O’Brien also earned a sixth-place finish at Can-Am Speedway in Lafargeville, NY on Friday night.

O’Brien started Saturday’s event with a second-place time trial effort in his group for the second Ogilvie’s Triple Crown race. O’Brien lined up outside the front row for his heat race, but things didn’t go exactly as planned when the green flag dropped.

“We got into a tractor tire coming out of turn four on the first lap of our heat. We just ticked it and it bent the drag link. We had to go to the back and we finished sixth in the heat. That put us 16th for the Feature and she was a long go.”

The 16th-place starting spot would be challenging for a normal weekly event, but the field was even deeper with talented drivers after several Quebec-based teams made their way to Brockville following rain at local tracks. The 50-lap distance though proved advantageous.

“It took the whole race to get there,” O’Brien said of his drive to the front. “The track was really fast all night and never really slowed down until late in the race. You had to fight for every spot you could get. I got to sixth somewhere around lap 34, then the yellow was out and we started going after the leaders at that point.”

On a fast racetrack after early morning rain, O’Brien entered the race knowing he would have to be prudent in order to reach the front of the field.

“You have to take your time early in those races when it’s that fast,” he said. “When something happens, there’s nowhere to and you’re pretty much caught up in it. We just sat back for a little bit and picked them off one at a time and let the race come to us.”

It was a late restart on lap 46 where O’Brien restarted second and he made his final move to track down leader Kyle Dingwall and steal the win. The victory was particularly satisfying as it was the first night for O’Brien’s new car.

“We had a restart with four to go and we got around him,” O’Brien recalled. “That was actually our quickest lap of the race. The car was great. I could drive the thing top, bottom or anywhere I wanted to go. That was a brand new racecar, so it’s pretty cool to bring out a brand new racecar and have a night like that. It was the first night for it.”

After Saturday’s win, O’Brien is hoping to run a pair of races again next weekend to start the month of July with a Friday race back at Can-Am on July 6 before resuming weekly action at Brockville on Saturday July 7.