(Image Credit: Gary Cornelison)
Bryan Hulbert – SAPULPA, Okla. (April 5, 2022) With Mother Nature and tire shortages changing plans to travel to Jackson Motor Speedway, Blake Hahn raced close to home this past weekend with the American Bank of Oklahoma ASCS Sooner Region and captured his first win of the 2022 season at 81-Speedway.
“It’s a relief to get that first win of the year out of the way. We haven’t had a bad start to the year, just a slow one with some of the things that we’ve had to deal with. I feel like we should have a couple of wins already, but to get our first at 81 was nice. We’ve had some success there in the past, but it’s been a while since we’ve earned a win there,” said Hahn of his weekend.
Taking the Sage Fruit, Co./ Glenn Styres Racing No. 52 to Creek County Speedway on Friday night, the run through the Heat Race led to starting 10th in the Feature. Using restarts to his advantage, Hahn battled with Sean McClelland in the closing laps, with the pass on the No. 1 coming on the final revolution.
“Getting to race with Sean is always fun, and the track made it tough. One and two, I finally got free enough to arc the corner the final maybe five laps, and three and four you could hammer the top, but you had to enter just right, and that was probably the biggest issue for me until the last couple of laps was not cheating the line.”
Gridding the A-Feature at 81-Speedway lineup fourth, Hahn shot to second while Ryan Timms took off with the lead.
Chasing the No. 5t into traffic, Blake hit the slide on Lap 19 to secure the lead. In traffic again as the race neared its conclusion, Timms made one final attempt at the point off the last turn but came up short.
“That was a fun race. In clean air, I don’t know if I could have caught Ryan, but once we got to traffic, I knew we had a shot at him. Just one of those situations where sometimes it’s better to be running second, and that was almost the case for him on the final lap. I got held up just enough that he was able to take a shot, but fortunately, the top of four was good enough to launch the car and stay ahead of him.”
Taking the chance to test the car more, the team will be back on track with the ASCS Sooner Region on April 15 at Creek County Speedway, and April 16 at Caney Valley Speedway.
The 2022 season is Blake’s 20th year of racing. Starting in Jr. Sprints at the Tulsa Shootout, Hahn has progressed through the ranks with over 100 victories across Micros, Midgets, and Sprint Cars.
For continued updates on Blake Hahn Racing, follow the team at https://www.facebook.com/BlakeHahnRacing and Twitter (@BlakeHahnRacing). Official results and press will be posted at https://www.blakehahnracing.com.