Easy as 1-2-3
Washington driver wins Lucas Oil ASCS Cocopah Nationals finale
Racing across the street from a casino, it seemed only natural that Seth Bergman would play it by the numbers for three nights at Cocopah Speedway.
The driver from Snohomish, Wash., would open the season finale event in the 2017 Lucas Oil American Sprint Car Series presented by the MAVTV Motorsports Network National Tour, the Lucas Oil ASCS Cocopah Nationals, at Cocopah Speedway, by finishing third on Thursday night, then second on Friday night and finally in victory lane on Saturday night.
“We were bad fast all weekend, and we’ve been knocking at the door all year, so to close this season out with a win tonight, it’s something we’ve been working very hard on,” said Bergman from atop victory lane Saturday night.
The win was Bergman’s 10th of his ASCS career, but it almost didn’t come to fruition when a leaking radiator nearly spelled disaster. “We fought a radiator issue in our hot lap session. We had a really bad leak, and we thought we had it fixed but we started the feature and all the sudden I was soaked,” said Bergman. “I had coolant all over me, but at that point in my mind, I knew how tough this year had been already and just decided to run it until it wouldn’t run anymore, and once we got going we actually set a pretty good pace.”
But it still was not clear sailing as Aaron Reutzel, from Clute, Texas, got past Bergman on the 21st lap off the 30-lap, green-to-checker affair. Bergman then battled back, retook the lead with three laps remaining and held off Reutzel in a sprint to the checkered flag.
“I knew with the guys behind me, I had to run a flawless race, and I made one mistake in traffic when I tried to slide Justin (Sanders) too early and Aaron made me pay for it,” said