Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
Running up front in both features on Saturday night, Sean Cronan posted a pair of impressive results with a 10th and third at Sunset Speedway.
Cronan started off the night by posting a time of 15.146 seconds in time trials to start the first feature from the 11th position. He’d quickly begin to make up some ground, running seventh at the first caution at Lap 9. Though as the race went on, he’d drop back some spots, running just outside of the top-10 with five laps to go. He was able to make up sme ground before the checkered flag as he crossed the finish line in the 10th spot.
With a 14-car invert from feature one to feature two, Cronan started the second feature in the fourth spot. He’d drop back to sixth in the early stages, but was able to make up some ground, running fourth at Lap 10. He’d then make a pass on Paul Maltese at the halfway mark to move up to the third spot.
From there on, Cronan solidly ran third and was set for a solid podium finish, till a late-race caution set-up multiple green-white-checkered finish attempts. The final attempt on the night didn’t go as planned, as Cronan made contact with the second-place car Nick Goetz, resulting in Goetz going around.
A review of the race would see the last restart not count, with Goetz remaining in second and Cronan scored third.
“It was a wild night,” Cronan commented. “Pretty happy with the end result, I guess. Restarts were a little crazy tonight. I was trying to be patient and I don’t know what happened. I was lined up there in a single-file restart and the car in front of me stopped. I hear that he got into the leader, and I don’t know. It is what it is.
“I hate that for those guys, but I’m not able to see through the car that he’s underneath another car and jacking up. So they scored it the right way, I think.”
Cronan noted he’s happy with the performance, giving thanks to Steve Tiemersma, Pete Shepherd and Jeff Walt for their help.
“It was a bit of a battle today,” he added. “We had a lot of problems. I’m very happy with the end result. We almost didn’t make it out for the second feature, so I’m glad we did.”
With how the first couple weeks have gone, Cronan has an idea of what he needs to do to possibly put the No. 84 Late Model in victory lane at the end of the night.
“We know where we’re lacking in the car – little loose in the middle,” he said. “Got some ideas to try for the next time in practice. I’m running against some pretty serious competition here, and we were only supposed to be out for two weeks.”
The original plan was for Cronan to run the first two events; however he could possibly run a couple more races this season.
“I don’t know if we’ll be back out, but we’ll see,” he said. “I hope so. I’m having a lot of fun and not many people get a third chance at racing. I’m pretty stoked right now.”
Ashley McCubbin – ashleymccubbin17@gmail.com
