Jason Feger had come close to victory multiple times during Week 2 of the Hell Tour until he finally broke through for his first DIRTcar Summer Nationals Feature win of the season Sunday at Lincoln Speedway.
Feger, 46, of Bloomington, IL, came into Sunday’s event with five-consecutive top-5 finishes that included three runners-up. In securing his 27th career tour victory, Feger took the lead from polesitter Kye Blight early in the race and led the rest of the way while holding off Tyler Erb – a winner of three races in Week 2.
“I thought we would’ve had several wins by now as good as a year as we were having and we had just lost handle on the car,” Feger said. “We’ve been working hard trying to get our setup back and baseline back. We found some stuff the last few nights that have made the car wake back up.
“It takes off a certain type of pressure and now we can just focus on winning and not getting the first win. It’s a weird deal. It’s a different mentality.”
Feger’s first win of the 2024 Summer Nationals also secured him the $10,000 points fund check as champion of Week 2 – an honor he also clinched with a win at Lincoln one year ago.
“In any points battle consistency is the name of the game,” Feger said. “I’ve lost plenty of them like [Erb] did this week. He had a tough week and probably would’ve won the points if it wasn’t for the Spoon River and Quincy incident.
“There’s just so many variables that are out of people’s control in this sport and unfortunately in the points game a lot of times that bites you and sometimes it can benefit me. If you do this stuff long enough, you’ll be on both ends of the spectrum.”
After winning his Heat Race and redrawing second, Feger started on the outside pole in the main event but lost the runner-up spot to Erb on the first lap while Kye Blight paced the field. Then, a caution came out on Lap 7 and on the restart, Feger got a great jump and rode the banking through Turns 1 and 2 to get by Erb and used the same line in Turns 3 and 4 to shoot by Blight for the lead.
Feger (25) passing Blight (33) for the lead (Tyler Carr Photo)
Once Feger took the lead, he never lost it, but that wasn’t without Erb making multiple runs at him in search of his seventh win of the season. For the rest of the contest, Feger rode the high side while Erb dug down low in an attempt to take the lead.
A caution on Lap 26 gave Erb one more chance to make a run for the lead. Despite his best efforts, Erb could not get by Feger as Feger crossed under the checkered flag at Lincoln for the third year-in-a-row.
Feger (25) holding off Erb (1) (Tyler Carr Photo)
While Erb and Feger displayed their frustrations with each other on the track at various points during the week, Feger said there’s no bad blood between them.
“I’ve known [Erb] for a long time and he’s a great guy,” Feger said. “One thing about him is that he’s a hard worker, a hard racer and you know he’s going to race you hard. He’s always going to give you everything he has. I’ve always respected that about him.
“We had a racing deal the other night and talked about it the next day and everything is all good. You need them friendly rivalries to push each other to be better regardless of who wins.”
UP NEXT
The DIRTcar Summer Nationals will take Monday off and return to action Tuesday, June 25 at Springfield Raceway.
Tickets will be on sale at the gate. If you can’t be there to watch in person, stream every lap live on DIRTVision.
ABBREVIATED RESULTS (view results here)
Feature (30 Laps): 1. 25F-Jason Feger[2]; 2. 1-Tyler Erb[3]; 3. 24-Ryan Unzicker[9]; 4. 38J-Jake Little[13]; 5. 96-Tanner English[4]; 6. 21-Billy Moyer Sr[6]; 7. 33-Kye Blight[1]; 8. 99JR-Frank Heckenast Jr[15]; 9. 58-Tyler Clem[7]; 10. 8-Dillon McCowan[11]; 11. 25E-Dakota Ewing[17]; 12. 15-Clayton Stuckey[12]; 13. 22R-Will Roland[19]; 14. 10K-Daryn Klein[14]; 15. 84-Myles Moos[16]; 16. 7P-David Payne[21]; 17. 30-Mark Voigt[20]; 18. 75-Daniel Adam[10]; 19. 38-Thomas Hunziker[22]; 20. 10-Garrett Smith[8]; 21. 50K-Kayden Clatt[18]; 22. 22*-Max McLaughlin[5]
