{"id":7118,"date":"2019-07-26T23:20:57","date_gmt":"2019-07-27T03:20:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=7118"},"modified":"2019-07-27T00:02:06","modified_gmt":"2019-07-27T04:02:06","slug":"kn-sam-mayer-overtakes-points-lead-wins-at-iowa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2019\/07\/26\/kn-sam-mayer-overtakes-points-lead-wins-at-iowa\/","title":{"rendered":"K&N: Sam Mayer overtakes points lead, wins at Iowa"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday night in Newton, Iowa Speedway fans saw yet another dominant performance this year, this time from\u00a0Sam Mayer\u00a0<\/strong>in the Casey’s General Store 150.<\/p>\n

The first of two NASCAR K&N Pro Series combination races of the season didn’t lack any drama, as Mayer’s victory means a new points leader on the East Coast side of the tour.<\/p>\n

“Getting this win here is just a start to what me and GMS can do,” Mayer said. “I feel like we’re going to have a lot more this year, and hopefully we can go five in a row [after this].”<\/p>\n

K&N: Sam Mayer overtakes points lead, wins at Iowa<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Finishing behind Mayer just under a second behind him was Joe Gibbs Racing’s\u00a0Ty Gibbs.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The 16-year old battled through the pack throughout the race after starting in dead last (20th) after failing post-qualifying inspection.<\/p>\n

Between his pair of K&N races and eight ARCA Menards Series races this season, Gibbs has finished second eight times, and he’s not one for moral victories.<\/p>\n

“I’m just frustrated I finished second,” Gibbs said. “It sucks. It’s good, but it’s not good in my place. I could’ve won eight times this year, but I finished second.”<\/p>\n

Early on in the race,\u00a0Derek Kraus<\/strong>, who came in as the points leader on both tours, spun and collected moderate back-end damage, putting him a lap down.<\/p>\n

It very well could have been the end of his night, but Kraus was lucky enough for the car to remain drivable.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know [what happened],” Kraus said. “He got loose underneath me, got into my left rear tire and we went around and hit the wall. There was definitely panic after that. I thought our night was next to done and then we really would have been deep in the championship.”<\/p>\n

Kraus’ team would re-group and make their way back up the field to ninth with just over 30 laps to go.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a pair of late cautions, though, Kraus was able to make his way back up the field on restarts and end the night with a fourth-place result.<\/p>\n

“Restarts [were] huge,” Kraus said. “You had to be super aggressive on the restarts because as soon as you got spread out the air was just so big.”<\/p>\n

Mayer takes the lead over Kraus in the points standings, and although it’s a slim one, it still felt good for the GMS Racing product.<\/p>\n

“That’s an amazing feeling,” Mayer said. “Me and my crew chief are just going to be working even harder than we [already] are and get as much of a points gap as possible. If anything unfortunate does happen it won’t effect us at all.”<\/p>\n

The NASCAR K&N Pro Series<\/a> tours will return to their normal shows on each coast, with the East tour heading to Watkins Glen a week from Friday (Aug. 2) and the West tour taking a couple of weeks off before heading to Evergreen on August 17.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
NASCAR K&N Pro East Series Standings<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Position<\/strong><\/td>\nDriver<\/strong><\/td>\nPoints<\/strong><\/td>\nBehind<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/td>\nSam Mayer<\/td>\n295<\/td>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
2<\/td>\nDerek Kraus<\/td>\n289<\/td>\n-6<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
3<\/td>\nChase Cabre<\/td>\n283<\/td>\n-12<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
4<\/td>\nTanner Gray<\/td>\n273<\/td>\n-22<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
5<\/td>\nMax McLaughlin<\/td>\n261<\/td>\n-44<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday night in Newton, Iowa Speedway fans saw yet another dominant performance this year, this time from\u00a0Sam Mayer\u00a0in the Casey’s General Store 150. The first of two NASCAR K&N Pro Series combination races of the season didn’t lack any drama, as Mayer’s victory means a new points leader on the East Coast side of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":315,"featured_media":7120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1148,14,669,1192,1191,1176],"class_list":["post-7118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nascar","tag-derek-kraus","tag-nascar","tag-nascar-kn-pro-series","tag-ruben-garcia-jr","tag-sam-mayer","tag-ty-gibbs"],"modified_by":"Connor Ferguson","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/315"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7118\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}