Bakersfield, California's Mike Mason showed a great deal of cool and collected domination and won the August 7th SRL Wild West Shootout Series main event at Bakersfield's Mesa Marin Raceway. The series rookie won the Infamous Inc 100 flag to flag meaning he led the field through all 100 laps around Mesa Marin's high banked half mile oval.
Mason and Joey Sampa led the 20 starters under the initial green flag with Mason jumping into the lead and Tommy Fry jumping into second to challenge the leader.
The first yellow caution flag flew into the air on lap 12 when Troy Ermish was tagged in the rear bumper by Thomas Martin. The Ermish Chevrolet did a 360 spin in the middle of turn three in front of oncoming traffic who did a nice job of driving around him.
On the restart Steve Belletto made quick work of getting around Fry to take over second and became Mason's latest challenger. Fry began to move backward in the field after contact from another car knocked him loose on the backstretch. By lap 25 he was no longer a factor in the race and eventually went a lap down.
The second yellow flag of the night flew on lap 30 and, again, involved Thomas Martin's Chevrolet. This time Martin was on the receiving end when he was tagged in the rear bumper by Sampa's Chevrolet and went spinning down the frontstretch before coming to rest against the inside wall.
On the ensuing retart Mason again ran away from the field with Belletto behind him. Eric Schmidt had now become a factor in the race and passed Belletto for second who made quick work of passing him right back. The see saw battle for second went on for several laps and was one of the better side by side duels of the race.
The yellow flag flew again on lap 64 and resulted in a wild 15 minutes of action. The lap 64 incident involved seeries points leader, and resident hot shoe, Rick Ruzbarsky whose night in Bakersfield was nothing short of frustrating. At the beginning of the night Ruzbarsky's Pontiac was backfiring horribly and he started dead last in the field. Through sheer determinatin he raced his way to seventh before his right rear tire flew off and left him helplessly bouncing off the backstretch wall. Ryan Foster's Chevrolet, who was running third at the time, also got caught up in the incident and had to retire from the race due to extensive front end damage.
The race barely got a restart when Harold Reiker JR spun in turn three. He got things under control quickly and no yellow flag was needed. But it was less than a lap later when Jeff Anthony spun in turn three and collected Ken Boyd who hit the wall. Boyd was able to continue despite missing his driver's side door.
The final yellow flag of the race came out on lap 80 when Tracy Bolin's Chevrolet spun on the backstretch and hit the inside wall. Bolin had worked his way to third before the accident occurred.
With each restart Mason did an excellent job of getting a jump on the field and always managed to get at least a three to five car length lead. He made quick work of running out the final 16 laps to get the win. Belletto held on the second while Sampa finished third. Mark Smith worked his was to fourth and Schmidt rounded out the top five.
In victoy lane the 17 year old sensational rookie celebrated with his crew and then said "I owe it all to my crew. I made a bonehead rookie mistake last night in practice when I knocked the nose of the car off. We were up until the wee hours of the morning putting it back together and I owe this to them."
In a team press release earlier in the week Mason said the felt his team had all the ingredients to be a winner and all they needed was some better luck. Commenting on the momemtum of a win at Mesa Marin Raceway he said "it's a huge momentum boost. Last year we were here with six laps to go and running second when a car blew up in front of us and we spun in the oil. We've always had a great car but we just couldn't seem to get the luck right. But tonight we finally got everything in the right spot and it paid off with a victory."
