Rico Abreu Earns Back-To-Back Chili Bowl Nationals Wins

And the Crowd Goes Wild

 

Four foot four driver, Rico Abreu had plenty to smile about Saturday
night after earning his second straight Chili Bowl Nationals victory
in Tulsa, Oklahoma. (Photo: Rainier Ehrhardt)

Taking the checkered flag, Abreu celebrated the victory win an impressive series of donuts on the dirt racing surface before climbing from the car.

Rico Abreu, a NASCAR Next member, won a hard-fought battle with midget car ace Bryan Clauson and Zach Daum for the win. When a caution flew with 12 laps remaining, Abreu got the opportunity he was looking for. Running around the high side of the track, Abreu took the lead with 10 laps to go and never looked back.

With a packed house of nearly 20,000 in attendance at the River Spirit Expo Center, the chant of “Rico, Rico” soon followed a series of wicked celebratory doughnuts.

RICO!!!!!!(via Dave J Biro III)
Posted by NASCAR on NBC on Sunday, 17 January 2016

“So I think this is one of the toughest tracks to be a leader at and set the pace," said Rico. "Just because with how much the track changes in a feature or in a race, you can run second or third, and have the advantage of moving around on the surface rather than being the leader and running the line that you started running where you got the lead at.”

Abreu will be racing a full-time in the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series with ThorSport Racing in 2016. I guess NASCAR Race Mom will be watching more Truck Races!

The 2017 dates have already been announced with racing action at the 31st annual Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals taking place January 10-14, 2017. Tickets go on sale the first Wednesday of March, 2016.

Results:

Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals presented by General Tire
Tulsa Expo Raceway - Tulsa, Okla.
Saturday, January 16, 2016
Lucas Oil Championship Night

A Feature 1 (55 Laps):

1. 97-Rico Abreu [4];
2. 63-Bryan Clauson [1];
3. 5D-Zach Daum [8];
4. 5-Jerry Coons Jr [6];
5. 71K-Kyle Larson [22];
6. 47X-Tim McCreadie [5];
7. 91T-Tyler Thomas [9];
8. 2X-Thomas Meseraull [11];
9. 67-Tanner Thorson [16];
10. 17-Joey Saldana [7];
11. 8K-Blake Hahn [19];
12. 71-Christopher Bell [2];
13. 67Z-Kasey Kahne [10];
14. 17G-Shane Golobic [20];
15. 77B-Alex Bright [3];
16. 17R-Ricky Stenhouse Jr [14];
17. 24-Tracy Hines [13];
18. 1-Sammy Swindell [25];
19. 71G-Damion Gardner [17];
20. 99P-Dillon Welch [21];
21. 3B-Joe B. Miller [24];
22. (DNF) 71X-Shane Cottle [12];
23. (DNF) 38-Justin Grant [23];
24. (DNF) 21-Daryn Pittman [15];
25. (DNF) 2A-C.J. Leary [18]