Hard Work Gives Bilderback Third Win in a Row
2024-08-03
A full field of thirty-nine cars showed up to Madison International Speedway, the biggest field of late models at the track in a decade. This included veterans like Bobby Wilberg, Jeremy Miller, and Brady Liddle as well as youngsters like Penn Sauter, Kendrick Kreyer, and Billy Braun.
Zack Riddle was the fastest man in town during qualifying, turning a lap of 18.729 seconds. Riddle beat out Casey Johnson by .002 seconds. Miller, Jon Reynolds Jr, Wilberg, Carson Philips, Sauter, and Landry Potter were the remaining eight from qualifying that automatically transferred to the feature.
In the Fast 8 Dash, Miller took the lead early and ran away, bringing home the win.
The first qualifier had Josh Lundy and Randy Sargent on the front row. Sargent grabbed the lead while Michael Bilderback worked from 4th to 2nd at the end. The two transferred to the feature along with Braun and Noah Eisenhower.
Qualifier two saw veterans Steve Rubeck and Liddle at the start. Rubeck experienced some struggles that would have him collect one of two provisionals. Liddle pulled off the win to transfer to the feature with Mark Eswein, Thayran Rezin, and Braison Bennett.
In the third and final qualifier, Grant Brown made his way past Rick Corso and Robbie Rucks to collect the win. The three drivers transferred with Kreyer.
The remaining nineteen cars then went to a last chance race with only two transferring. There were plenty of battles throughout and it was Ronnie Osborne (1st) and Mahlon Borntreger (2nd) that collected the final transfer spots. Lundy earned the other provisional and the field was set.
During the last chance race, Brady Bill experienced an issue with his brakes that sent him hard into the wall between turns 3 & 4. Bill eventually got out under his own power and went to sit on the outside wall. From there he walked back to the pit area.
After the invert, it was Bilderback and Potter on the front row to start the feature. For the first couple laps after the green flag flew, Potter challenged the lead a couple times but then faded with handling issues that put him 22nd.
Once Potter was out of the way, it was teenager Sauter who tried to make his way up to battle Bilderback, without much luck. Just 13 laps in, Johnson got by Sauter for the 2nd spot, but was 3 seconds behind the leader at that point.
"Michael was out there a ways," Johnson said. "It was either burn the car down trying to get to him or wait for a caution. We chose to wait for a caution and it never showed up."
Lapped traffic did not hurt Bilderback at all, seeing his lead grow to 5.5 seconds at the checkered flag with no cautions to be seen. It wasn't just the easy day it appeared to be for Bilderback and the team though.
"We unloaded and the thing wasn't very good," Bilderback said. "We changed some stuff, stuggled some more and changed more stuff for the heat race and ended up finding a bad shock. We changed three shocks, two springs and the panhard bar right before the feature."
It's the third win in a row for Bilderback in the Big 8 Series, he now extends his standings lead more with the fourth of the season.
The Big 8 Series heads to Dells Raceway Park for the 59th National Short Track Championships on Saturday, September 14th.
