CLERMONT, Ind. — Bobby Santos never let last year’s Carb Night Classic USAC Silver Crown disappointment escape his memory bank.
He remembered it all too well after leading 63 laps before seeing Kody Swanson drive by him in traffic for the lead and the win.
Given the same scenario during Friday night’s latest edition of Carb Night at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, Santos was bound and determined not to let it play out the same way.
Santos, of Franklin, Mass., led all but one circuit of the 100-lap, $10,000-to-win feature, briefly relinquishing the lead for a split second before surging back to the front and holding off Swanson to earn his first series victory in more than four years, since the Phoenix round of the 2018 season.
One year after Swanson became the first driver to win in two different types of racecars in a single night at IRP, Santos did just the same on this night, and in a cycle-like fashion as well.
Santos clocked in as the fastest qualifier for both the midgets and Silver Crown, then finished the racing smorgasbord with a midget feature icing and a Silver Crown cherry on top.
Santos’ 13th career IRP USAC win also matched Swanson for second all-time on that particular list, just two behind Tracy Hines’ 15.
“This race beat me up pretty bad last year,” Santos remembered. “We had a perfect night, but we didn’t have a perfect race car. Those guys were better than we were at the end and those guys are the best. There’s no arguing that. They are the standard for Silver Crown racing. It’s been tough chasing them, but it feels good to steal one from them tonight. It’s been a really long time since I’ve won one of these things, so I was driving pretty desperate. I just raced as hard as I could and did what I needed to do to win the race. Now we’ve just got to go back to work and get a little bit better with this thing.”
In his five previous Carb Night Classic Silver Crown starts, Santos had reeled off five consecutive top-four finishes between 2017-2021, with a runner-up result in both 2017 and 2021, a third in 2019 and a fourth in 2018 and 2020. But this one was different and ultimately proved to be so.
With a full load of fuel, Santos burst away at the start to hold the early advantage before a barrage of turn one accidents early in the proceedings halted the action, kickstarted by 25th running Dave Berkheimer who slid up and smashed into the turn one SAFER barrier on lap six.
Santos continued to own the number one position by roughly five car lengths in a top-three breakaway along with Kody Swanson and Ryan Newman as a quarter of the race had been inked into the books. That’s when Austin Nemire (16th) became the next in line to smack the turn-one wall and came to a halt in turn two on lap 27.
Just a few ticks before the halfway point, Kyle Robbins (16th) became the third victim of the turn-one wall.
Santos opened his lead to as much as 1.2 seconds over Swanson, but it didn’t last for long. Swanson steadily shrunk the gap between he and Santos down to a single car length with Swanson now draped all over the rear bumper of Santos.
Swanson got the bite he sought after and was able to pull alongside to the outside of Santos between turns three and four on lap 72, and promptly nipped Santos at the stripe by the width of a single wheel. Swanson expertly washed up the racetrack at the entrance to turn one to yank Swanson’s line for his own purposes and disallow a counterattack from Swanson.
The fight of Swanson was brought back front and center to Santos with nine laps remaining as Swanson got himself completely even to the inside of Santos with eight laps to go in turns three and four, but Santos, not giving an inch or a yard, never flinched, with Santos escaping the fracas.
A yellow flag on lap 93 for sixth running Justin Grant, who spun to a stop backwards at the entrance to the pits in turn three, tightened up the battle at the front and battened the hatches for the possibility of one more Swanson attack.
Swanson decidedly took the high road, but Santos was strong through the middle, not allowing Swanson much room to maneuver high or low amid his pursuit.
On the final set of turns on the last lap, Swanson stuck his nose around the outside, but Santos had enough in the proverbial tank to fend off Swanson to make it his turn at victory this time around, with Santos winning his second feature of the night, this one by .094 seconds.
Santos and Swanson were followed to the line by Taylor Ferns with a career-best third-place result. C.J. Leary, making his first Silver Crown pavement start in three seasons, was fourth. Logan Seavey, who initially had trouble starting the race, rounded out the top five.
Swanson challenged Santos immensely in the late stages of the 100-lapper but came up a 1/2-car length short.
“I never did complete a pass, but I tried really hard to,” Swanson stated. “Bobby drove a great race, drove really hard and he had a great car, but so did I. We weren’t where we needed to be, and we made some changes and had a shot. That’s all you can ask for as a driver. On those long runs, I felt like I had a shot, but I just couldn’t quite figure it out. That was everything I had.”
Ferns made history on Friday night as the first woman to finish on the podium of a USAC Silver Crown race.
“I really wanted that win, but I knew we were probably all dealing with the same thing on our cars,” said Ferns, who is an operations manager at a law firm by day and is currently attending law school. “I was just so tight on acceleration coming off the corners, so I was almost kind of protecting, and you’ve got to kind of pick and choose whether to go for it or protect. I guess we’re in the middle there. When the last caution came out, I told my guys, ‘the gloves are off; I’m going for it.’ Congrats to them, but I want that win. The next Silver Crown pavement race, we’re going for it again.”
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Keyword: Santos Doubles Down In Silver Crown