RPW Exclusive: The Champ Gets It Done; Jimmy Phelps Wins Friday At Brewerton

Column By: DYLAN FRIEBEL / RPW – BREWERTON, NY – Defending Brewerton Speedway Modified track champion Jimmy Phelps was able to win the battle of titans on Friday Night as he defeated teammates Billy Decker and Larry Wight and the rest of the star-studded field.

Troubles last week during the opening night feature set up Phelps and his HBR Racing 98H with an upfront starting position after winning their heat. With that, he knew he could get out early and run away from the rest of the competition.

“When you start up front like we did, you kind of just want to run away and hide,” Phelps said. “We didn’t know how much of a lead we had when the caution came out. I saw that about halfway through, the 91 (Decker) and 99 (Wight) had come from the middle of the pack.”

A string of cautions caused the field to bunch up again, and by lap 24, it was go time again, but Phelps was up to the challenge.

“We’ve been good lately,” he said. “We’ve had some good runs…some thirds at Land of Legends, but we’re not on the level of Matt (Sheppard). We’ve been telling ourselves that we could run halfway decent.”

In the end, Phelps held off everyone to take the win at the D-Shaped Dirt Demon, and releasing a big weight off his shoulders.

“Beating those two here feels good,” he said. “They’re tough here. Next week, we might be able to tell if we can come from the middle of the pack and move through traffic.”

For Phelps, this year is his first year in a long time that he doesn’t have a teammate and is the only car weekly out of the Heinke-Baldwin Racing stable.

“It’s not that much different,” he said. “I have Kurt (Wiegel) who’s prepared my cars for the last 15 years. Him and Mike (McLaughlin) are good guys but Max (McLaughlin) had to move on. We all did our own thing setup wise. I’m happy for those guys, but it is not much different for me.”

With the Super DIRTcar Series about to pick up, and Brewerton looking to have its season clearly underway, Friday’s win may just be a huge first step in a title defense for Jimmy Phelps.

Modifieds – JIMMY PHELPS, Billy Decker, Larry Wight, Tim Sears Jr., Matt Hulsizer, Pat Ward, Chris Hile, Rob Bellinger, Tom Sears Jr., Chad Phelps, Dave Marcuccilli, Roy Bresnahan, Andrew Ferguson, Nick Krause, Katelyn Hile, Jason Occhino, Tim Murphy, Tyler Trump, Ron Davis III, Chris Hulsizer, Jim Witko, Tim Harris, DNS Joe August