Rookie of the year battle heating up

Aaron Skillman photo

By Ken de la Bastide

Seven races into the season, Jackson Macenko has opened a comfortable 160 point lead over two-time champion Dameron Taylor. Macenko coming off his first career win at Anderson Speedway has recorded three wins, a second, two thirds and a fourth place finish to date.

Taylor has recorded one victory with two runner-up finishes. He finished 12th at Anderson

While Macenko has been building his point lead, the battle for rookie of the year honors is starting to heat up. Veteran driver Dave Osborn holds just an eight-point margin over Kyle Ford. Ford has recorded three top-five finishes over the past four races while Osborn has been in the top five only twice over the same time span.

Osborn is third in overall points and only three points ahead of Clayton Gaines. Osborn has 1,259 points to 1,256 for Gaines and 1,251 for Ford.

Thomas Schrage is third in rookie points even though he has missed two races while competing with another series. Schrage is the only rookie in 2022 to have recorded a victory, winning at Anderson Speedway where he finished second in the most recent visit to the high banked quarter-mile oval. He also finished fourth at the Mt. Lawn Speedway race.

The Kenyon Midget Series returns this coming weekend to the challenging Shadybowl Speedway in Ohio. The uniquely shaped Shadybowl Speedway is unlike any the series has competed at in recent years. It has a downward sloping corner coming off turn one and climbs up to turn two.

Taylor said he knows nothing about the track, but believes his father, Tim, raced a modified there in the past. “I don't think there is an outside wall on part of the track,” he said. “It looks pretty wide, so we should have good racing like at Montpelier. “It's probably a momentum track and it looks like you won't be driving straight very much,” Taylor said. He expects to figure out the racing line pretty quick since it's a pavement oval. “The first time we went to Columbus, I picked that up pretty quick. Set fast time and won the feature,” he said.

Colin Grissom, the 2020 champion said he is familiar with the Ohio oval. “I've never race at the Shadybowl, but I've been there a lot,” he said. “It's shaped like a Pringles potato chip,” Grissom laughed.

Former Kenyon Midget competitor Trey Osborne said the track surface is really rough and challenging following a test earlier in the year. “It has a lot of up and down character to it. “You enter high and then cut down in the corner,” Osborne said. “The third and fourth corners are a lot different than one and two.”