Sedgwick, Cain Have Rough Time Staying Close With Leaders

While Johnny Benson and Ken Schrader, NASCAR Winston Cup regulars, put on an entertaining show in the Pontiac Wide Track Grand Prix 200 NASCAR Winston West series race Saturday at California Speedway, Winston West regulars Bill Sedgwick of Acton and Jerry Cain of Canyon Country struggled.

There were 24 lead changes during the 100-lap race, mostly between Benson and Schrader, although Winston West regulars Brendan Gaughan of Las Vegas and Jason Small of Bakersfield also led before Benson took the lead for good on lap 93. Schrader passed Gaughan on a restart with two laps remaining to finish second.

Sedgwick struggled with handling problems and finished 15th, running the final lap on a flat tire.

“We finished better than we thought, but that’s not where I wanted to be,” Sedgwick said. “The back is the back. We are very lucky we got a 15th. It was at the expense of everybody else, and I don’t like to see anybody drop out.”

Cain, who started 31st, worked his way to 12th by the 22nd lap, but he was using a motor that was designed for short tracks and soon started falling behind. He parked his car with 20 laps remaining rather than risk blowing up the engine, and finished 26th.

“My crew chief said, ‘You’re up to 12th,’ and I was watching the oil temperature go up to 300 [degrees],” Cain said. “I thought I was going to blow [the engine] for sure.

“The game was to get out of line, lift [off of the throttle], get some air, let it cool down and go racing again.”

Sedgwick echoed the sentiments of NASCAR Busch Grand National Division series regular Ron Hornaday, who said the properties of the racing surface changed between Friday and Saturday.

“We just never got the handle on it,” Sedgwick said. “It ran a lot different during happy hour than it did [Saturday].We probably should have made [adjustments Saturday morning], but the car ran good [Friday] so I didn’t want to mess with it.”

Sedgwick said when the crew did start making adjustments to the car during the race, they were the wrong adjustments.

“We were unsure what the car needed, and we ended up going the wrong way,” Sedgwick said.

Cain started from the rear after wrecking his car during qualifying Thursday, but he recorded the sixth-fastest time in practice Friday at 172.894 mph. He said when they started the car Saturday morning for final tuning, the engine had a sticky lifter, forcing the crew to install the short-track engine.

“There were times when I was going through [turns] one and two when I never lifted [my foot from the throttle],” Cain said. “That’s when you know you’re down on power. This motor was designed to make power coming out of the corners, not to make power on the straightaways.”

Sedgwick and Cain agreed that the presence of Benson and Schrader was a plus.

“They’re killing us out here, but I love the competition,” Sedgwick said. “If we were racing short tracks, I could be a lot closer to these guys. They run between 180 and 200 [mph] every week and they’re used to it.”

Said Cain: “On the one hand, there is no way we can run with guys that do this 50 weekends out of a tear racing or practicing. On the positive side, we learn a ton from them racing with them, and they also bring fans to our races.”