Heitz Goes Back-to-Back Again

(Wauwatosa, WI) -- For the second time this season, Joe Heitz has won back-to-back events, taking the March Madness title at Bermuda Raceway, following a win at the Deckertring one week ago. This follows his back-to-back wins early in the season at Halloween Havoc and Jackson 500. Heitz's win in the March Madness final over Husarsbilt Cup championship points leader John Wiedemann shaves seven point off the gap. Heitz's win is his fifth, the most of any driver for the '23-'24 season.


Weidemann fired the first shot of the night with a blistering qualifying session and setting a new track single lap qualifying record. Heitz was more than two tenths of a second slower in his qualy lap for the second seed in the tournament and his Michael Shank-It Racing teammate Mike Kristof was only .007 of a second slower for the third seed. Wiedemann's FAST teammate took the fourth seed.


In the opening round of the special head-to-head tournament style event, eighth seed Brad Core was bested by ninth seed Dan Margetta, seventh seed Pete Dorn moved on with a victory over tenth seed James Spehert and the upset of the first round saw FAST's Steve Rist take his #98 eleventh seed Honda-Daboiler past CBD Racing's Bill Black sixth seed #7 Chevrolet-Daboiler.


With those races setting up the quarter-finals, top seed Wiedemann took on CBD Racing's Margetta and easily moved on to the semi finals. Each quarter-final victory is scored as a heat win for championship points. Third seed Kristof, moved on with a win over Dorn to advance as did his MSR teammate Heitz, but not without plenty of drama. as the #06 Honda-Daboiler barely held of a hard charging Rist in the second half, the three lap lead of the opening period shrunk down to one lap at the finish. FAST teammates, fourth seed, Matt Hayek and fifth seed, Dean Strom battled for the semis with Strom able to move on.


That left the final four, which featured teammate vs teammate. Wiedemann again Strom and Heitz vs Kristof. The opening semi-final saw the best battle but eventually "JW" would take the win, while Kristof attempted an unorthodox strategy, running from the outside red lane in the opening half, a lane the #60 pilot felt he had an advantage in, but the lead the Heitz would build in the opening half was too large to force the #06 into a mistake as the top two seeds would face off in the final.


The final saw Wiedemann open a solid three lap lead in the opening half, but a few too many mistakes in the second half by Wiedemann and smooth running by Heitz allowed the defending Husarsbilt Cup champion to move ahead and flip the lead to three laps for himself and take his fifth win of the season, following up his Deckertring Grand Prix win a week earlier. With Wiedemann taking pole, and most laps in a heat win, the current point leader added  four points on top of his 40 for a second place finish, minimized the damage against Heitz's 51 point haul. This shrinks the gap by only seven, down to 71 with two events remaining in the 31st IndySlotCar season.


The series moves from the semi-tropics of Bermuda to the desert of the Shrine Desert Road Course for the penultimate round of the season for the Shrine Cup.


See the box score of March Madness here.

 

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