Ashton Winger Wins Davenport Hell Tour Feature

After a mechanical failure resulted in a DNF at Moberly Motorsports Park (MO), Ashton Winger went to Davenport Speedway (IA) looking for a comeback story in the DIRTcar Summer Nationals. Winger made it happen Wednesday night, scoring the victory on the quarter-mile track.

It wasn’t an easy or dominant win for the driver who hails from Georgia, and at one point he debated on packing up early.

“I wasn’t very happy after qualifying,” Winger told Always Race Day. “I was about ready to load up honestly. But we changed a few things and got where we needed to be.”

The evening initially looked like it would be in favor of a Simpson brother, after both Chris and Chad Simpson won their heat races and shared the front row of the 40-lap feature together. Chad led early on in the race until being passed by Winger for the top spot. He would later fall into the clutches of his brother and Jason Feger to finish in 4th. Feger entered the evening as the points leader and raced his way to a 3rd-place result.

Winger took the lead on lap 22 and held it until Chris Simpson pounced on the bottom on lap 30 after a restart. Chris held on for the next six circuits before the outside groove began working again and Winger made the pass one last time. Chris wasn’t upset about his runner-up finish:

“We will take it, second place against these guys is pretty good,” said Chris afterwards. “I had no idea the top was going to rubber up like that. I was just one lap too late at getting up in the rubber.”

Of course not everyone had the night they were looking for. Forrest Trent pulled to the infield just before halfway, ending his night early.

Doug Tye was 13th in the standings before the feature tonight, but had issues that left him with an 18th-place finish.

Cody Bauer was looking to turn his Hell Tour around, but had to win the consolation to make it to the A-main, and was caught up in a restart stack up which resulted in a finish of 20th.

The next race of the Hell Tour was slated to take place on Thursday, June 22nd at Spoon River Speedway (IL) but was canceled because of a track equipment malfunction. The series will now return to action on Friday, June 23rd at the Brownstown Bullring (IL).

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