Wright, Ostheimer win main titles in same night
PETALUMA — In one big evening at Petaluma Speedway, Ricky Wright Jr. and Devon Ostheimer added two much-awaited milestones to their blossoming parallel careers.
After several close calls, the Morgan Hill teens broke through for respective first wins in 360 Sprint Cars and Wingless Sprints last Saturday. Wright, 17, won the 18-car 25-lap feature on the three-eighths-mile adobe track, and Ostheimer, 15, bested a field of 22.
“It’s definitely a big relief. I feel like I got the monkey off my back,” Ostheimer, who took second in his last two races at Petaluma, said Friday. “I feel like I should have had this win a long time ago. But you can’t force it; you have to relax and not try to win. If it’s meant to be, it’ll happen.”
Ostheimer recalled his early days in micro sprints, when he followed his first victory with 16 more.
“Once you get that first win, your confidence goes through the roof,” he said. “You feel like you can do anything again.”
Ostheimer overtook Terry Schank Jr. for first place with 15 laps remaining. After Schank withdrew because of a broken shock absorber, Ostheimer held off Billy Aton and Ryan Bernal — previous winners at Petaluma — the rest of the way.
“It helped having all that clean air in front of me. That was very important,” Ostheimer said. “If you’re faster than someone, it still doesn’t guarantee you anything.”
Like Ostheimer, Wright was rewarded an all-important front-row start because of his good heat time. Wright moved ahead of pole-sitter Norm Johns after four laps, but Brett Rollag passed Wright on the high side during Lap 14. A Turn 3 tangle between Ivan Worden and Roberto Kirby, though, negated Rollag’s move, and Wright went back into the lead for good. He crossed the finish line less than a second ahead of Rollag.
“I got lucky, the red came out just when I needed it,” Wright said in an article printed on the track’s Web site, www.petaluma-speedway.com.
Wright’s luck was different in his last race, when, after leading for 19 laps, he hit a pothole and never recovered.
Alongside Ostheimer, his old micro-sprint rival, Wright finished the job Saturday.
“Devon, he’s my sidekick,” Wright also told the track Web site. “It’s special that we both got our first wins on the same night. I’m pretty stoked right now.”
