When lap 20 came in Saturday’s 410 Knoxville Cup A-Main, Brian Brown was ready to take his shot. Brown, who started fourth in the race, had passed Austin and Terry McCarl to take second place in the first five laps of the evening, though it was evident that passing race leader Kerry Madsen would be a bigger challenge.
Brian Brown slides past Kerry Madsen to win at Knoxville
Brown kept pace with Madsen for 15 laps. The split times fluctuated like the flip of a coin, 0.6 seconds, 1.1 seconds, then back down to 0.5. Brown wouldn’t have a better opportunity to make a move, so he slid the car into turn one.
“We were pretty good all night long trying to catch him and moving around,” Brown said. “I got a good run there and went across.” Brown’s car slid into the cushion, right in front of Madsen.
While Madsen checked up in time, his car got caught up in the dirt and he would go on to flip multiple times, corralling a harsh DNF.
Madsen said:“He slid straight accross when he had no speed so I had to lift and hit the brakes. It put me into the cushion and I took off. I was just trying to stay on four wheels at that point. It was a silly move, but what’s done is done and we’ll move on.”
Brown’s slide job would pay off, as the Missouri native earned yet another 410 victory at Knoxville. In case anyone thought that Brown made a dirty move, he was reassuring in saying that it wasn’t.
“Where I was going to land and where he ended up crashing is just so thick,” Brown said. “It was just one of those racing deals. He’s one of my friends, I definitely wouldn’t try to crash him on purpose.”
Racing for the lead and Kerry Madsen ends up upside-down! He is OK! pic.twitter.com/kgQy6Xw2VM
— Knoxville Raceway (@knoxvilleraces) June 24, 2018
Brown’s victory was his seventh of the season in what has been a dream year for him. Though his team has missed two of the nine total Knoxville Cup races that have been run so far, Brown has won all but one of the races he has competed in this year. In the one race that he didn’t win, Brian Brown held the runner-up position.
“You just have to keep trying to plug away and try to do better and better every single time you hit the track,” Brown said. “We weren’t as good as I felt we needed to be tonight, but we got to victory lane.”
The victory will push Brown into a better points position in the Knoxville Cup standings, which won’t be official until Monday afternoon.
“We’re never concentrating on the points,” Brown said. “We just want to come here and win races. Luckily that’s gotten us back in the points.” Brown said that his team is scheduled to miss one more race this season.
As for Madsen, he’ll pack up shop and focus on the Brownells Big Guns Bash at Knoxville Raceway next Friday and Saturday.
“[We’re] dissapointed,” Madsen said. “Especially having that good of a race car and having the lead. Hopefully the boys will go back to the shop and rebuild it and we’ll be back next week with a vengeance. We made a lot of progress tonight and we’ll come back and we’ll be better [after] it.”
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