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Tankersley wins ‘Bandits Outlaw Sprint Series feature at 82 Speedway


NickHolt

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Mundie, Randall & Tankersley Take Swipes at 82 Speedway ‘Bandits Feature Win

Petty, TX (04/04/2) - The Bandits Outlaw Sprint Series rolled into ‘The Land of the XL,’ 82 Speedway, in Petty, Texas last night for the third tour stop of the young 2021 season. A beautiful Easter eve drew a solid crowd of fans and teams to the vast expanses of ‘82, thus the tracks nickname.

A talent-soaked field of 24 teams would assemble to entertain the fans – especially the youngsters – as car owner Sherry Bryant (#99B and #B99) had coordinated a massive Easter Basket drive that resulted in dozens of baskets being doled out to kids in the Texoma area attending the event. 

Track owners Tracy and Shelley Peters had the facility in pristine condition and the track surface would be ultra-fast in the qualifying heat races with lap times in the upper-11 second bracket on several occasions.

Originally slated to start 5th in heat race number two was the young hot shoe driver out of Waco, Chase Randall, in the Bush’s Chicken #9 EMI sprinter. The #777 of Tulsa’s Bailey Hughes was slated to start directly in front of Chase, but she would suffer a blown engine in hot laps, ending her highly anticipated debut in the Bandits Outlaw Sprint Series. That would move Chase up to a 2nd row outside starting position. He would go on to power his way through the field and take the win – and securing the top qualifier spot in the A-feature to come.

Channin Tankersley would cruise to a heat race number one victory after starting second, while Austin Mundie would win heat race number three after firing off from second row, inside.

Those three drivers would also become the primary focus in the feature race, as all three would take the lead at one point, making for a highly entertaining race for the fans – as each of them looked dominant while they had their time in the point position.

So, lets jump into the feature event. After a beautiful 23-car 4-wide parade lap, the appreciative crowd settled in for the highly anticipated battle to come. And a battle it was.

Austin Mundie would blast his way to the lead from his outside-pole position and immediately assume a 10-car length lead over Tankersley and Randall. The trio would pull away from the balance of the field until lap three when the caution lights would blink for Austin Burkham who experienced mechanical woes and would be sidelined for the night.

On the ensuing Delaware restart pinning Mundie as the lone polesitter, he would take the green only to have 4th and 5th place drivers of Chad Wilson and Casey Burkham lock horns going into corner one, sending the rest of the field scrambling behind them.

Luckily for the field, with the wide expanses of 82 Speedway, they were able to avoid further carnage as the disabled pair of cars blocked the bottom half of the track. The red flag was thrown at the time of the incident so track crews could extricate the pair of cars without being incumbered by the rest of the field circulating around the speedway. When the cars of Burkham and Wilson were untangled, it would leave Burkham on the hook ending his night, while Wilson would be relegated to the tail of the field. But his night was far from over.

The race would resume with Mundie once again surging to a 10-car length lead. Over the course of the next few laps, Tankersley and Randall would chip away at the lead Mundie had established.

That lead completely evaporated at lap 10 whilst the lead trio was negotiating lapped traffic. They would all continue slicing and dicing their way through traffic with Randall slipping by Tankersley for 2nd on lap 12.

Shortly thereafter, Mundie would choose a high line entering corner three, once again still mired by lapped traffic, while Randall would precariously huggie-pole the inside line and would exit corner four as leader by just a scant amount.

Then Mundie would execute a clean slider across the bottom of corner one and the top of corner two retaking the lead – but Randall anticipated such a move and would charge back under Mundie to regain the lead once again.

The following lap, 15, would see the #99B Cabinets by Tommy owned sprinter of point leader John Ricketts unexpectedly losing the left rear tire and wheel assembly, sending Johns car to the infield with the tire and wheel nearly making a half a lap around the track – yet without any of the cars making contact with it during that wild sequence of events.

This caution set up a 10-lap battle to the finish with Randall out on the point by himself and the pair of Mundie and Tankersley glued to his rear bumper as the green unfurled…with Michael Day and Dalton Steed now pressuring the lead trio.

As the field entered corner one Tankersley would blast the upper tier of the ’82 high banks and exit corner two with the lead from his third-place restart position, snookering the lead pair of drivers – much to the surprise of all – except those who have been to a Bandits Outlaw Sprint Series event, as this sort of action has become commonplace.

As the excitement of the swath of lead changes still at top-of-mind to the fans witnessing the event, in just one click of the clock the drivers were shown the 5-to-go signal from the flagman, and it was at that point Randall would quickly start tracking down Tankersley, and right when it started to look that Randall might have one final chance to battle it out for the lead, a quick caution would come out for a disabled car at the bottom of corners one and two; setting up a two lap dash to the finish.

Series marketing partner www.KoolTrikes.com had established an exciting promotion prior to this event called the Kool Trikes $500 Last Lap Pass For The Win award, which was clearly a distinct possibility of being claimed going into the final restart.

‘Bandits series rules require when any race gets down to three laps to go, any restart becomes single-file. As the final restart of the night resumed, Tankersley would again choose the high line with Randall executing a jumbo-sized slider from the pole of corner one to the top of corner two exit, getting nearly side-by-side with Tankersley, the pair would get precariously close to each other, yet not touching, and Tankersley would have the preferred line on corner exit and pulled away with the lead – and eventual win.

On that final restart, seemingly out of nowhere, young Chance McCrary had been quietly passing car after car from his 17th place starting position and would zip to the checkers in third position, while Chad Wilson would claw his way through the field after his lap-3 fracas with Burkham to take home the 4th position, with 2020 ‘Bandits champion Michael Day rounding out the top 5 with a very solid performance in the Rodney Henderson owned #67 sprinter.

The final checkers were thrown at 10:37pm, allowing fans and teams to get back on the road so they could enjoy their Easter holiday today. This marks all three ‘Bandits events of 2020 concluding prior to 11pm thus far.

The tour now moves to a highly anticipated 1-night stand at 

I-30 Speedway

  in Little Rock, AR on Saturday, April 24th (7:30pm) with the running of the Hammer Hill Bandits Outlaw Sprint Nationals. Complete event information will be forthcoming in the next few days.

We’d like to thank 82 Speedway and its crew for providing such an awesome facility and well-expedited racing program for our Series drivers to showcase their talent at. The ‘Bandits will return to 82 Speedway on Saturday, July 3rd with the 3rd Annual Flags and Fireworks 25, and for the 3rd annual Paul Peters Memorial on Saturday October 9th.

For complete series information, visit www.2021BOSS.com or on Facebook, check us out @BanditsOutlawSprintSeries.

Happy Easter to everyone out there and thanks once again to our marketing partners for helping us bring sustainable outlaw sprint car racing to this region.

I would like to dedicate this press release to my Uncle Ronnie who passed away this morning in Minnesota. He was a big racing fan – just like his brothers and sister (my mom, who still attends 'Bandits events today). May he rest in peace.

Here’s the feature rundown from the April 3 Texoma Bandits Outlaw Sprint Nationals at 82 Speedway in Petty Texas:

Car Number Driver Positions Advanced:

17g Channin Tankersley (+3)

9 Chase Randall

13m Chance McCrary (+14)

20 Chad Wilson (+1)

67 Michael Day (+6)

83 Jett Hays (+4)

4 Austin Mundie

B99 Blake Mallory (+14)

26 Dalton Steed

35K Dylan McCann (+3)

7 Jerrad Warhurst (+10)

3 Brett Engstrom (+8)

4X Heath Nestrick

41M Steve McMackin (+4)

71 Colby Estes

V8 Robert Vetter

74 DJ Estes (+2)

74E Claud Estes III

45B Casey Burkham

4B Austin Burkham

0 Bill Miller

99B John Ricketts

23 Junior Jenkins

777 Bailey Hughes (DNS)

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