Rhodes cruises to K&N win at Iowa Speedway

NEWTON – Ben Rhodes’ first celebratory burnout will have to wait.

Not because he’s not winning races, but because his crew chief said so.

“They told me on the radio, he says, ‘Don’t burn the motor down,’” Rhodes said with a smile after winning the Casey’s General Store 150. “I was like, so does that mean I get to do a burnout? He’s like, ‘No, no, you do not do a burnout. I will come out there and beat you up if you do that. You can earn it if you win the championship later in the year.’”

Although the NASCAR K&N Pro Series season is only about one third of the way finished, Rhodes did all he could on this night to position himself for a championship burnout at season’s end. The 17-year-old gave K&N Pro Series West drivers a glimpse at what his east counterparts have been experiencing the first few months of the season.

Rhodes, who entered Saturday night’s race with four top-five finishes in the east series’ first five races and an 18-point cushion in the east series standings, won the first of two joint east-west races at Iowa Speedway. The Louisville, Ky., native did so by 2.377 seconds and secured his second victory of the year in the process.

Rhodes posted the second fastest time during the afternoon qualifying session and never fell back from the leader early in the race. The high school junior then went on to lead 115 of the 150 laps at Iowa Speedway.

“…I just felt like we had to be in the right position,” he said. “I didn’t want to fall back too far, but at the same time we needed to save tires and we got to the halfway point, told them what we needed and the track actually changed a lot once we went back out with the sun going down and the changes they made really worked out well and made me capable of saving the tires and not having to fall back at all. That was the key to our race tonight.”

Rhodes led the lead pack shortly after the scheduled restart at lap 76, putting him ahead of a wreck that affected three cars jostling for position near the top five. Pole sitter Brodie Kostecki, Cole Custer and Cameron Hayley got caught up between turns one and two on lap 78. The wreck sent Kostecki to the garage for the evening and Custer and Hayley to the back end of the lead lap.

“The deal with Cole, he made contact with another car, I don’t know who, in [turns] three and four, and then they went down into [turns] one and two and it looks like they just both lost it,” said Nick Drake, who was running in the top 10 at the time of the wreck. “I didn’t really see exactly what happened, but we managed to stay out of it.”

Drake made the most of the wreck and moved up into the top five with 70 laps to go. He finished second behind Rhodes.

Drake and Scott Heckert, who finished third, both had their best K&N Pro Series finishes Saturday.

The race recognized winners from both the east and west series and David Mayhew, who finished ninth overall, was the top west performer at Iowa Speedway.

“We knew the next west guy was pretty far back and a couple of those guys were a little bit quicker than us at the end,” Mayhew said of the race’s final 25 laps. “Just kind of played it safe; we knew we didn’t have the car to win tonight, but wanted to bring it home in one piece.”