Kody Swanson Takes 500 Sprint Car Tour Win at Toledo

Kody Swanson scored his third win of the season with the yourBIGplans.com 500 Sprint Car Tour on Saturday, taking the checkered flag at Toledo Speedway.

Swanson took the lead on lap 16 from fellow championship contender Jackson Macenko, capitalizing in lapped traffic to assume the top spot. The two-time series champion then held off the likes of Dakoda Armstrong and Bobby Santos, III on a series of late restarts to become the first driver in series history to win twice at Toledo.

One week after negotiating lapped traffic paved the way for Santos to win with the series at Anderson Speedway, Swanson cashed in on the fast half-mile in the Glass City.

"A week ago, I got took to school by Kyle O'Gara and Bobby Santos by not being aggressive enough in traffic," said Swanson in victory lane. "Maybe I'm just here a week late and got a chance to learn from my mistakes.

"Jackson caught those lapped cars racing each other. As a leader, there's nothing he can do. You just pick a spot, and I had the good fortune of being able to pick second. It just worked out for us there. I knew I had to make a move and try to make something happen."

While he led the most laps in the race, Swanson never felt comfortable out front with the level of competition behind him.

"You've got guys like Dakoda and Bobby in line, and so was Tyler. I imagine on those yellows that they're just going to drive right around me if I' not careful. You get your mind right. I knew I had nine laps to go, just give my hardest nine to try to get there, including a good launch off of four, get into one hard. Even then, you don't feel safe until you get clear down the backstretch. Just try to gut it out.

"I didn't know until the last lap if I was going to see somebody. Just knowing how well these guys race. You're never safe when they're pursuing. They race you really clean and really hard, but we all want to win. I'm really grateful to be here in victory lane today."

Santos settled for a second-place result after running fourth for most of the contest. Macenko fell out of the second spot after a spin in traffic on lap 31, and Santos passed Armstrong on the ensuing restart.

"I just needed a little bit more grip in the car. Honestly, all day, we had a really good car," said Santos. "Off the trailer, it was good. We just missed it a little bit. Feels like we had a good race car, but missed it a little bit, and we're still over here.

"The lapped cars are tough. Lapped cars are always a battle. I'd say Jackson got put in a bad spot and got caught up. We were lucky to sneak through there."

Armstrong settled for a third-place finish, fighting a car that handled worse and worse as the race progressed into the closing laps.

"At the beginning of the race, I thought I had the best car," Armstrong explained. "I thought I was a little better there for the first five laps, and then it just started getting tighter and tighter.

"I ran out of adjustment. I've got about six knobs in there and they're all maxed out. I don't know if we had a right-rear [tire] going down, but it's three pounds low and would not come back up.

"We lost about an inch of stagger there, and I was just kind of hanging on to it those last nine laps. No matter what I did on those restarts, it would not turn through one and two. I was just along for the ride at that point."

Tyler Roahrig finished fourth, with Derek Bischak rounding out the top five.

The yourBIGplans.com 500 Sprint Car Tour season finale is scheduled for Saturday, October 17 at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park.

-Photo credit: Koty Geyer

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