Logan Schuchart led from pole position and never looked back, leading all 50 laps to win $1,002,023 in Thursday night’s Eldora Million.
The Hanover, PA native survived his car coming off of the jack stand during the race’s break and multiple restarts to claim victory in the #1s Shark Racing machine over Carson Macedo in second and Brad Sweet in third.
“I don’t think I have the words in my vocabulary to describe the way I feel right now, honestly,” Schuchart said.
“This team, I can’t say enough about them. They work so hard and it bugs me so bad when I feel like I can’t give them the results that they deserve sometimes. But I felt like coming to this racetrack, it’s one that we’ve ran good at in the past, we’ve had the chance to win big races here and I just felt good about what we had going on.”
Shortly after the race started, Cole Duncan spun after contact with another car, bringing out the yellow and sending Duncan to the infield. The field got back into position and started the race over again. Schuchart led the first lap ahead of Sweet and Macedo.
Race control stopped the race at Lap 20 for a scheduled five-minute break with Macedo in second over Sweet, Aaron Reutzel and Kyle Larson. While teams changed tyres and made adjustments, the Flo Racing camera caught the Shark Racing machine slipping off the jack stand as it was receiving fuel.
After the five-minute break, Schuchart led at the restart but Reutzel lost control in Turn 1, collecting Larson and causing both cars to flip. Spencer Bayston and Giovanni Scelzi got collected in the incident as was Lachlan McHugh. Race Control threw the red flag immediately.
All drivers communicated with track safety officials after exiting their machines and the push trucks got the remaining cars under way. Schuchart led again as Sweet and Macedo fought for second position.
As the laps wound down, Schuchart kept his car out of trouble and pulled off a dominating win for his grandfather’s race team but not before a small final lap drama.
“I definitely smacked the cushion pretty hard,” Schuchart said about the start of his final lap.
“I didn’t have the speed that I had a few laps before that getting up to lapped cars and I kind of took the air off the wing and got a little tight entering the corner so I was trying to get the thing freed up and I had to kind of jam the brakes and get it freed up coming down back across the racetrack.”
James McFadden led Australia’s charge as two Aussies contested the 50-lap feature. While McHugh ended his night upside down in 23rd place, McFadden started 16th and gained spots slowly to finish 10th.
The Alice Springs native felt like he had a good car, but there just wasn’t enough to challenge the leaders.
“Our car was really good, felt pretty decent,” McFadden said.
“I just struggled to make a lot of speed. We were just trying to figure that out. I feel like I had an issue, like I feel like I had an issue, but it’s not a big enough one to say, ‘Hey, it’s, it’s blowing up.’
“We just can’t put our finger on it, whether it’s the rear end tightening up or the brakes sticking on or it’s possibly an engine issue or something. But yeah, just all weekend just struggled to make mile an hour and then it just got worse then. So we’ll go back to the drawing board and see what we can do.”
Five other Australians competed in heat races. Jamie Veal finished 14th in the first heat race and did not start the first C-Main. Ian Madsen also scratched from the first C-Main after finishing 13th in the second heat race.
Trent Pigdon and Kerry Madsen both finished 13th in the third and fourth heats respectively while Cody Maroske finished 11th in the fifth heat race.
Pigdon finished 11th in the first C-Main while Maroske finished seventh in the second C-Main. McHugh finished fourth in the B-Main to advance to the A-Main.
The Kings Royal is Saturday at Eldora Speedway, paying $175,000 to win.
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