Wheatland, MO—Most of the time this season when the Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series visits a track, it is the first time that Lucas Wolfe has seen the facility while many of the drivers he competes against have been to that track countless times in their careers. The playing field will nearly be equal on Sunday, September 14 as the World of Outlaws make their debut at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Missouri, a track that only two of the series drivers have ever competed on.
Wolfe, who is in his first full season on the road with the Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series, is excited to take to the state-of-the-art 3/8-mile to wrap up a tour through the Heartland. He competed for the first time in his career in the state of Missouri earlier this season at I-55 Raceway.
“I hear the track on Sunday (Lucas Oil Speedway) is really nice and I am definitely looking forward to that,” said Wolfe. “I enjoy going to new places and we seem to get up to speed pretty quick at them.”
While he may be a rookie with the World of Outlaws, Wolfe is no stranger to competing at different tracks. Last season he raced at 17 venues, with a majority of those races coming on the always tough Central Pennsylvania sprint car circuit.
“We did a fair amount of traveling back home before we came out here,” he noted. “I got around to probably more tracks than most local guys do. That helped quite a bit. I think we have done pretty well going to tracks for the first time. Some places we have been really good at and some not so good at. I am looking forward to continuing to go new places.”
Wolfe missed nearly two months of action earlier this season after fracturing a T-4 vertebrae in his back at Tri-City Speedway in Illinois in early June. He returned to the seat at Red River Valley Speedway in August and recently completed his first trip to the West Coast, where he visited more tracks for the first time.
“I’m feeling pretty good now,” he said. “I had a fair amount of soreness for a while and I’m over that now. Unless the track is unusually rough I am pretty good. It was tough at Chico (Silver Dollar Speedway). I was bouncing around pretty good and that didn’t feel too good on the back. As far as racing goes, I feel pretty good. I think we are back to where we were before I got injured. Hopefully we’ll be able to move forward.”
Wolfe won his first Crane Cams Dash of the season on September 2 at Cottage Grove Speedway in Oregon to earn the pole position for the 40-lap contest. He battled Jason Meyers tooth and nail at the start of the race, and after Meyers passed him in turns one and two, Wolfe used the momentum on the high side of the track exiting turns three and four to lead his first lap of the season. He wound up sixth in his debut at the high-banked ¼-mile.
“It’s obviously good to win (the dash), but you want to win the next event (the A-Feature) more. It was the first time we actually raced at that level since I got back, so that was good. It was something we had to get out of the way and hopefully we’ll be able to do that a couple more times throughout the end of the year. Hopefully we can continue building on what we have learned this first year and at the new tracks. It was definitely a good result up there with it being our first time there and we hope to repeat that a couple of times.”
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