Aaron Reutzel dominates all night to win the finale of the SugarBee Blackjack Bash over Thorson and Abreu

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By Kyle Foster, photo courtesy of Eric Thompson (Shamboozled.com) 

Kfost91197@gmail.com

Twitter/X: @NapaKyle @NapaSportsNews

Las Vegas-It’s always nice to hold the points lead. It really doesn’t matter what time of the season it is. After all, it takes consistency to win a season-long title. 

After winning the finale of the SugarBee Blackjack Bash with Interstate Batteries High Limit Racing, Aaron Reutzel is in the points lead with the whole season to go. 

He knows that to win the title, it’s going to take consistency over the whole season. However, this will entitle winning, too. 

“Yeah, like I said, you know, the first night we were not very good, and last night I thought we were really good,” Reutzel said. “A few mistakes kind of cost me, and then I felt like a little fine-tuning on what my car was doing about the end of the race, if we could fix that a little bit. We hit on it great tonight. These races are won and lost in traffic. I felt like we had our car so good that I could go anywhere. I could go where the guys weren’t and, you know, go off their right rears and stuff.” 

Reutzel’s win sees him score the $21,021 earnings for the finale. He was perfect throughout the whole program on the way to the win.  

In his heat, he started 4th as one of the drivers who locked in from points scored over the first two nights of the event. In that heat, he drove to the lead, which gave him the pole position for the dash that he won. 

“I mean, it’s crazy,” Reutzel explained of his heat race win. “It was a big move, for sure, and that’s part of the things that we have with this series that make our racing so exciting, where we don’t have to ride around.” 

He also proceeded to lead all 30 laps of the main event on the way to leaving with the points lead. 

But this win wasn’t without some controversy. During an open red flag on lap 26, his crew was seen working on the car and initially docked two spots along with the 83T of Tanner Carrick. However, his crew was unable to hear the horn, and this penalty was rescinded. 

“Well, I’m glad that I don’t know. I guess there was officials over in one and two, and supposedly a few team owners as well,” Reutzel pointed out. “I know Kevin Rudeen and a few other guys said no one over there heard the horn. I guess they were over in three and blew the horn. We were over in one, and no one over there heard the horn at all. So luckily, there was a bunch of guys that stood up and said that.”

Finishing second in the event was Tanner Thorson. He nearly won this race as the dice roll driver. But this ends what has been a solid week on the half-mile. The team has shown so many gains in this part of their program over the last two seasons. 

“Just focusing on keeping stuff simple, and our motor package and everything, just everything’s really good, and just trying to keep the car super stable for me,” Thorson said of the improvement on half miles. “But with a lot of forward drives, kind of difficult at times, and we’ve been able to find a good little package to do that.”

Thorson was also locked into the 4th starting spot, but in heat 2. This gave him a nice starting spot where he turned it into a podium.  

“I struggled early in the night, in the heat race, honestly, just with the wind and stuff,” Thorson added. “That’s something about our car with the wind. It doesn’t really like the wind for whatever reason. I don’t know if it’s just our ride heights or wings. I don’t know what it is, because I don’t see many cars kind of acting the way mine was. So, yeah, just, I just tried to just keep my nose clean. I knew where I needed to be on the race track.”

Thorson sits just two points back of Reutzel for the series lead after the Vegas weekend. 

Rounding out the top three was Rico Abreu. The open red was pivotal in him landing this finish after falling to fourth for the majority of the main event. 

“I think we just adjusted our car just the launch version of what it needed to get off the corner a little bit better, and I was able to just kind of allow the right rear to come up some, but still squeeze in the center and be able to be aggressive on the throttle,” Abreu explained. “So I just try to relay that information back to all these guys and allow them to kind of navigate what direction they want to take the car with adjustments.”

But more importantly, the defending champion had speed at the end of the night for the first time this season. He also sits third in points, 16 back of Reutzel. 

They didn’t go and race with the World of Outlaws in February, which made these races the first three with the Tony Stewart Racing team. 

“I feel that it can be quite an advantage to go get some laps earlier in February, if you can go pick up some races with the outlaws,” Abreu continued. “ As you see it tonight, it took us a few races to get everything kind of warmed up and greased up, to get our season going. So I’m not too concerned knowing that we have a 66 race schedule with High Limit you with 15-plus World of Outlaw races added in there, and knowing that, like my priority to all this is finishing these races, and then when we get to the big crown jewels, that’s where we got to have Team Iron tight to be able to compete for race wins at that position.”

The series will be back in action next Thursday through Saturday at Central Arizona Raceway in Casa Grande, AZ.

An incident occurred with the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars on Saturday night. Like the whole racing community, we send our thoughts and condolences to everyone involved.