Finally… Finally The Jeffer got the Bridgeport monkey off of his back and finished a feature event, even collecting a top 5 finish in the process.

It’s been a tough couple of seasons for The Jeffer at Bridgeport. Since teaming up with Ronnie Roberts last year, Heotzler has made numerous trips down to the superfast 5/8ths mile but with little to nothing to show for it.

A list of bizarre happenings kept the 14H from ever finishing a single race. The worst part about it was that the 14H was very quick in almost all of those instances.

However, at the Wingate Classic, things started to take a turn for the better.

The Jeffer finished in 3rd in the 3rd heat which sent him to the all important redraw. Surprisingly, he redrew 4th and would start the 40 lap event from the outside of row 2.

Tire choice was the name of the game and the 14H team may have went a little too soft for the feature event. For the first half of the race, The Jeffer was just trying to hold on, at one point falling back to 7th, but a mid race yellow helped to turn things around.

After using the caution laps to cool his rear tires, The Jeffer pounced on the ensuing restart, picking back off the positions he lost earlier.

With 10 to go, The Jeffer was comfortably in 5th place, where he would end up when the checkered flew.

We’d like to thank Ronnie and Fay and the entire Roberts Racing/Watt Racing team for their continued support. We are very happy to finally have a decent showing at your home track and look forward to doing it all again!