Full Throttle

Matt Kenseth tried to keep up.

But in the end, Midwest horsepower trumped NASCAR starpower as Tim Schendel of Sparta, Wis capped a sweat-soaked Sunday with a dominant win in the Rasmussen Group Twin 75s ASA Super Late Model Series race at Iowa Speedway.

“It’s top three,” Schendel said of the triumph that came two weeks after needing a last-chance win to gain entrance to the feature. “It ranks right up there. Every win is No. 1. It’s awesome. They don’t come easy, ever.”

Much of the estimated paid crowd of 14,888 came to see Kyle Busch compete along with 2003 Cup champ Matt Kenseth, who ended up third behind Schendel and Jonathan Eilen.

Busch, who raced Saturday night in a NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series at Kentucky Speedway, led most of the first 75-lap segment of the 150-circuit race, slowed and pulled in on lap 84 with mechanical problems., never to return.

Kenseth (3rd) was in a fierce three-way battle for third during much of the late going, beating Donny Reuvers of Dundas, Minn ., and Chris Wimmer (4th) of Wausau, Wis., for that position.

According to ASA officials, Busch dropped out because of a rear end problem.

A crew member told reporters a flat tire finished his day. (So he had a flat rear tire?)

Whatever the reason for his exit, Busch did not talk to reporters after the race and his car and equipment had been loaded into his hauler by lap 125.

Busch left the track in an Iowa Speedway courtesy car before the race had ended.

“I wish he wouldn’t have broke,” said Schendel, who qualified first but started 12th after the field was inverted. “I didn’t want to be the guy who won because Kyle broke.”

Schendel credited crew chief Chris Bires, whose younger brother, Kelly, races in the Nationwide Series, for making adjustments that allowed him to power to the front of the field.

“Everybody’s so good, there’s never a dull moment,” said Schendel, who took 41st in last year’s NASCAR East vs. West race at Newton.

“There’s never a lull where you’re going to run around in 10th and think you’re going to have a top-five finish.”

Eilen managed to hold off Kenseth for a second-place finish while enduring stifling heat - he had no cooling elements infused into his race suit - but couldn’t catch Schendel, who won by 3.2 seconds.

“A long race, it seemed like, but a good, fast race,” Eilen said.

As for Kenseth, third-place didn’t bring despair.

He went with the word “fun” to describe the sweltering day’s events.

“It was good, a lot of fun,” the Roush Fenway Racing driver said. “It was a really clean race.”

Exciting, too - with or without NASCAR’s Cup points leader.

“I wish I could have raced him at the end,” Schendel said of Busch. “And seen how it would have went.”

Sixteen-year-old Thor Anderson, a student a nearby Bondurant-Farrar High School, started 14th and raced to a seventh-place finish right behind Jamie Iverson of Escanaba, Mich.

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