MAQUOKETA, Iowa — Tony Jackson Jr. scored his second Lucas Oil MLRA win on the weekend on Saturday night, cashing in on a classic back-and-forth battle with Chris Simpson at Maquoketa Speedway.
The 30-lap main event would find the last two Maquoketa Speedway MLRA winners starting on the front row in Chris Simpson and Jackson Jr.
Jackson stole the lead on the first circuit, but it didn’t take Simpson long to return the favor. Simpson, who had ran third the previous two nights with the MLRA, used a power move to drive past Jackson on the lap two to take the lead.
Simpson started to put some distance between the leaders but the cushion was short lived as the duo caught lapped traffic on the race’s seventh lap.
With two lapped cars to split for Simpson, Jackson used the situation to his advantage and was able to slip past the Oxford, Iowa, driver to regain the race lead. Remaining caution free for the entire distance the leaders continued to navigate lapped traffic with Simpson stalking Jackson’s every move.
As the leaders exited turn four coming to the white flag, Jackson gave the fans more excitement then he bargained for as he slipped off the top side of the race track and allowed Simpson one more shot at the win.
Jackson kept his foot in the gas and maintained his advantage, scoring the $5,000 win by .454 seconds over Simpson.
“There were two lapped cars there in front of me and they just covered my shield there with mud and I just got real tight so I didn’t want to lift because I didn’t know how close Chris was there,” explained Jackson. “It was a lot more banking off there (turn four) than I anticipated so I was just lucky to get back on.”
Frank Heckenast Jr. rallied to his best finish of the weekend and rounded out the podium in third. Spencer Diercks would come home in fourth followed by Chad Simpson.
“It threw us some curve balls there,” noted Jackson of the race surface. “It was so fast around the bottom and then it started throwing stuff up there in the middle but I could drive this thing anywhere.”
The finish:
Feature (30 laps): 1. 56JR-Tony Jackson Jr[2]; 2. 32S-Chris Simpson[1]; 3. 99JR-Frank Heckenast Jr[5]; 4. 29D-Spencer Diercks[3]; 5. 25-Chad Simpson[8]; 6. 15V-Kolby Vandenbergh[4]; 7. 15K-Justin Kay[7]; 8. 10P-Paul Parker[9]; 9. 22-Daniel Hilsabeck[6]; 10. 99-Sawyer Specht[11]; 11. W56-Gary Webb[12]; 12. 07-Matt Ryan[15]; 13. 10T-Jeff Tharp[10]; 14. T22-Tegan Evans[14]; 15. 78S-Steve Stultz[16]; 16. 17-Tim Simpson[13]; 17. C15-Brandon Hamburg[17]
Keyword: Jackson Is Maquoketa LM Ace