To hear him tell it, Alan Krimes has had a terrible year. His worst ever.
But he was good enough to finish fourth in Lincoln points, and has been in the hunt in most Lincoln features in 2012. Saturday night, Krimes sifted through the leaders to score his first Lincoln win of the year, the tenth of his Lincoln career.
Time trials and a redraw placed Krimes fifth for the start. Third starting Cory Haas became the third different leader of the first lap and led the first 10 laps before second-starting Brent Marks grabbed the lead at the flagstand in heavy lapped traffic to complete lap 11. At the time, Krimes was running fourth behind eighth-starting Danny Dietrich.
Haas began to fade after Marks took the lead and was back to fourth by the end of lap 12. Dietrich and Krimes moved into second and third that lap, and Krimes caught Dietrich for second on lap 15. Krimes then chased down Marks as the leader continued to sort their way through lapped traffic, and took the lead on lap 19.
“That was wild! It went by fast,” said Krimes upon exiting his Conestoga Valley Garage #87 in victory lane, “I knew the laps had to be winding down there we were racing for the lead and when I got the lead I saw there was only three or four to go and I thought Wow, that went fast! I guess time flies when you’re having fun!”
“We’ve been awful all year everywhere we’ve been,” added Krimes, “We won early at the Grove, and I didn’t think we’d get another win the rest of the year. Those three cars (Dietrich, Haas, and Montieth) have been way better than us all year. We passed two of the three Brian started behind us. We got by Dietrich and Cory somehow. It feels good to beat all three of those guys, along with a bunch of other guys. Marks has been really fast, too and once he got in the lead I thought it might be tough to get around him. But once we got into lapped traffic there, it didn’t seem like anybody could roll the bottom in one and two and I wasn’t too bad down there. He (Marks) went to the top in turn four and I got a run on the bottom and made it work.”
From there, he drove away to a 2.33-second win over Marks, with Dietrich, ninth-starting Brian Montieth, and Haas completing the top five. Sixth through tenth were Billy Dietrich, polesitter Brad McClelland, Jim Siegel, 19th-starting Niki Young (driving the John Pinter #92), and Gerard McIntyre, Jr.
Heats for the 410 Sprints were won by Danny Dietrich, Haas, and Kyle Moody. Marks set fast time over the 22-car field with a one lap time of 13.519-seconds (99.859 mph).