ROSSBURG, Ohio (Oct. 9) — A new crew chief and new car has Kyle Bronson of Brandon, Fla., feeling great — and hopeful for a better future after a struggle-filled season.
A fourth-place run at Friday’s Clash on the Wabash preliminary feature on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at Eldora Speedway with his fresh Longhorn Chassis indicated he’s on the right track.
“It felt really good, you know, and I gotta give it all to my guys,” Bronson said. “They’ve been working their ass off, and they’ve really built this car here in a week. And like I said, this made my job a lot easier there, and I feel like they got a pretty good balance going on here for me, so really, we just need to get racing and fine-tune this thing and get myself more comfortable in it.
“This whole deal’s a package deal and it’s been frustrating as of very late, but days like today makes it worth it.”
The past two weeks have brought a heavy amount of change to Bronson and his crew. Anthony Burroughs signed on as Bronson’s head wrench before the Lucas Oil tour’s stop at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway last weekend after departing the Koehler Motorsports team and driver Ricky Thornton Jr., and after racing Rocket Chassis all year Bronson made the switch back to a Longhorn and debuted it at Eldora.
Bronson credited Longhorn’s Steve Arpin, Matt Langston and Kevin Rumley for getting him back into racing for wins.
“I mean, definitely there’s pros and cons of both cars and all,” Bronson said of Longhorn and Rocket Chassis. “Burroughs, a lot of his knowledge is from the Longhorn stuff. That was the deal we made when we was able to hire Burroughs, is to go do this (Longhorn) deal, and like I said, it worked out.
“We just gotta keep working. People think (Rocket’s) Mark (Richards) is gonna slow down, and that’s never going to happen. That guy’s the hardest working guy I know. Like I said, both of these guys build really, really good cars. And like I said, I’m just proud to be in a fast one.”
Bronson has been tending to start off A-mains fast, taking early leads before fading later in the race. During the recent Jackson 100 at Brownstown Speedway, Bronson paced the field for laps 2-23 before fading to finish 16th, and he commanded laps 25-62 in August’s North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky. before falling back to finish 10th.
Friday saw the opposite, which has Bronson encouraged. From his 10th starting spot, he charged forward, passing Chris Madden for fifth in the 40-lapper’s first 20 circuits. He snuck around Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky., after a restart with three laps to go to cross the finish line in fourth.
“The balance of the car was really good,” Bronson said. “I messed up in that heat race there and let Ricky get by me on the start there, and just made a couple of bad moves. Just being fresh in the car, we didn’t get to practice it. Today’s the first day on it, and like I said, just really looking forward to getting this thing fine-tuned and getting ready to put this thing back in the winner’s circle here pretty soon.” — Bryan Ault
Source: www.floracing.com
