2024 USAC Indiana Midget Week at Lincoln Park Speedway

USAC Indiana Midget Week Results At Lincoln Park Speedway

Results from USAC Indiana Midget Week Thursday June 6, 2024 at Lincoln Park Speedway.

Jun 7, 2024 by FloRacing Staff

USAC Indiana Midget Week Results At Lincoln Park Speedway

It’s quite evident that second place had no place in Emerson Axsom’s vocabulary during Thursday night’s USAC Indiana Midget Week event at Putnamville’s Lincoln Park Speedway.

In fact, second place had become a way too common gut punch for the Franklin, Indiana racer since his most recent USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship triumph nearly three years earlier in the summer of 2021.

Since that point, he’d finished as the runner-up on an astonishing nine different occasions with nary a victory to show for his efforts in USAC National Midget competition. In 2023 alone, Axsom finished second five times with the series, all while coming up just short of glory.

Even in two previous Lincoln Park midget starts, Axsom ran third in 2021 and then took second in 2023 after leading a race-high 20 laps. On Wednesday at Lawrenceburg, he led 18 of 30 laps and saw a chance at victory slip away late.

So, in other words, one might say Axsom was due to grab one when the tour rolled into Lincoln Park’s 5/16-mile dirt oval on Thursday. Axsom made his winning move on lap 19 of the 30-lap affair after dueling past his Keith Kunz/Curb-Agajanian Motorsports teammate Ryan Timms for the lead, and ultimately, the victory in his TRD – IWX – Mobil 1/LynK/Speedway Toyota.

For Axsom, the performance marked his first career USAC Indiana Midget Week win in what was his 16th start in the five-race series across the Hoosier landscape. Overall, it was his third career USAC National Midget feature score, an achievement he had longed to conquer for these past 1055 days since last making his victory bow to the crowd at Fairbury, Nebraska’s Jefferson County Speedway.

“I haven’t won a midget race in a long time, but I feel like I’ve run second a million times,” Axsom sighed with relief. “I’ve gotten beat on the last lap, and it seems like stuff just hasn’t gone our way since Fairbury in 2021. I’m glad to win with these guys. (Car owner) Keith (Kunz) deserves to win all the time. He puts a lot of work into it and it’s a dream to drive for him. I’m glad we finally got one.”