Team Satisfied With Silver Cup Weekend

After the disappointment of the Mini Gold Cup weekend Seth and the crew headed back down to Chico for the Silver Cup 360 sprints weekend. Friday night was a packed card with Wingless Sprints and Dirt Modifieds also on the race schedule.

It was the teams first run in the 360 sprint car since Tulare of last year and the team was using the weekend to test some setups in preparation for the up and coming ASCS Northwest Sprint car season. The weekend was a good preview for the team as the ASCS format was being run for the entire weekends event. The format has every car going into a ball drop with your ball determining where you start for your heat race. Points are awarded for finishing position and passing to determine which feature race you start in.

Friday’s ball drop landed Seth starting fourth on the grid for his heat and had him pitted against local favorites Tim Kaeding and Randy Hannigan. Seth drove a very controlled race, but like the previous weeks Friday’s races the setup was not quite right and he struggled to get any bite off the turns. Seth managed to hold on for fourth place, and would need to wait until the other heat races finished to see what would happen.

With a jam packed racing line up race organizers where only able to run an A Feature race. Unfortunately for Seth he finished 21st in points after the heats and that meant he missed the feature by one spot. “We just didn’t hit the setup tonight, said Seth after the race. I just couldn’t get any speed out of the corners and with the track being so hard I just couldn’t get the speed I needed to be challenging for the win in my heat.”

Friday’s feature was taken out by the most dominate 360 driver in America last year Shane Stewart, with Paul McMahan continuing is good form from the Mini Gold Cup by finishing second, Tyler Walker rounded out the top 3 with Tim Kaeding in fourth.

Saturday nights feature event the Silver Cup was a full card of Winged Sprint Races and with Friday night under their belt the team was confident of a solid performance.

After the ball drop Seth lined up sixth on the grid four heat four and was pitted against Skagit Speedways 410 champion from 2007 Brock Lemley. As the green dropped it was evident that the car was having the same issues as Friday night as Seth was quick coming into the corners but wasn’t able to gain speed coming out of the turns. Seth was able to get by Tyler Franklin and Cody Geaney to move into fourth but was passed by Lemley at the end of the race to finish fifth.

That put Seth into the B-Main starting in position eight with six spots up for grabs to qualify for the A feature. The team was able to make some modifications after the heat to give the car some more speed out of the turns, and right from the green Seth looked more comfortable in the car. Seth quickly got by Matt Barber to move into seventh and by the early stages of the race had moved into sixth spot. Early leader Cody Meyers crashed and that moved Seth up into the transfer spot. On the restart he was able to get by James Sweeney and for the remainder of the race battled with Richard Bailey for fourth. Seth was unable to get by Bailey and settled for fifth. This put Seth into the feature starting from 21st position out of 22.

Like Friday night the A feature started at a cracking pace. It wasn’t long before the first caution came out for Alissa Geving and on the restart Seth was able to get by Richard Bailey and like usual Bergman fashion he started moving up the board. Wrecks continued to happen and on the restarts Seth was able to make up spots using his tenacious driving skills to keep challengers at bay.

By the later stage of the race Seth had climbed up to fourteenth position and that is where he would finish. The race was won by local driver Sean Becker with Brad Sweet in second and Paul McMahan in third. “Saturday was a lot better, said Seth. We didn’t quite hit the setup again, but we were extremely fast on the restarts. If there had been some more cautions later in the race I think I would have defiantly moved further up the board. I am satisfied with the weekend it was great to get some more seat time and the car will continue to get better each week.”

Seth and the crew will head to Cottage Grove in Oregon on Saturday April 5th for the Cottage Grove Speedway season opner.