Heading into the 2009 season, Joey Saldana had won sprint car races in Australia, New Zealand and numerous ones in the United States, though one place missing from that list was Canada, where the World of Outlaws have competed a total of eight times over the last three years. The native of Brownsburg, Indiana changed that on Friday night in the opener of the third annual Oil City Cup at Castrol Raceway in Edmonton, picking up the win to add a win north of the border on Canada to the list of countries he has won in.
For Saldana, it was his series leading 14th A-Feature of the season and the 53rd of his World of Outlaws career. He has now won six times on 3/8-mile tracks this season to lead the series aboard the Budweiser Maxim.
“It’s huge to win here,” said Saldana in Victory Lane. “This is a long trip up here and to come and race at a facility like this is nice. I wish there was more tracks like this and people that support 410’s (sprint cars). If you want to see good racing, this what it is, the World of Outlaws.”
Saldana lined up second and blasted his way into the lead on the high side of the track in turn two after Danny Lasoski led the field into turn one after starting on the pole. He quickly jumped to a big lead as Donny Schatz moved into second with Lasoski retaking that spot on the third lap, setting up a battle between Schatz and Kinser for the third position.
The leaders found themselves in lapped traffic for the first time on the sixth lap with Saldana continuing to use the high side of the track, as he worked through heavy traffic for the next eight laps before the first caution of the night flew on the 14th go-around. Saldana would endure five cautions over the course of the 35-lap contest with 20-time series champion Steve Kinser lining up second on each of the subsequent restarts.
“It was definitely better the longer the runs went,” noted Saldana of his car. “I saw Steve (Kinser) down there on the bottom a couple of times and I think that the longer we ran the better we got. I felt really good and I thought we may have put a little too soft of a tire on and if we had put a little bit harder tire on we would have been really good. It was a great effort by the team.”
Saldana used the high side of the track on each restart, with Kinser looking low entering turns one and two each time. On a restart on the 19th lap Kinser nearly got even with Saldana heading into turns three and four. Saldana used strong restarts each time to maintain his lead, including on the final restart of the night with just two laps remaining.
“It was a great race for us tonight and a great track,” Saldana stated. “It was awesome, I like tracks like that. It was a good run for the entire team. We worked hard all night. We drew the 10 (in the dash) and won the race. That’s hard to do with these guys.”
Kinser lined up fourth and battled Donny Schatz early in the race taking the third spot from him on the third circuit. He then tracked down Danny Lasoski and got around him on the 10th go-around before setting his sights on Saldana. Kinser would end up second in the Quaker State Maxim.
“We definitely gained a lot tonight from where we have been the last three or four races,” shared Kinser. “I feel like we have a car that we can get up front and we’ll work with it and see what we got tomorrow night.”
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