Horizon Award
Shining brightly in the
distance is the horizon- a spectacle that can make you mysteriously continue to look
forward into the distance. Our Horizon Award
was put into place to recognize drivers, whose careers shine as brightly as the sun on the
horizon. Past winners of this award are Don
McKnight, Matt Lux, Brian Woodhall,
Young blood of course is
one of the most important elements in the makeup of our Horizon Award. No race track can survive into the future without a
strong contingent of young lions. They add
color and excitement to our program each and every Saturday night and it is truly an honor
to watch them grow and develop into some of the region’s toughest competitors. This year we felt it necessary to give out two
Horizon Awards as two young high school drivers really stepped up to the plate.
Since its inception,
Mercer has been a drivers’ track. Some
racers avoid it like the plague and others race at it only when they have to, then there
are those that have learned to love it. One way to tame the
tricky configuration is by learning to race at Mercer at a young age. Our first recipient of the Horizon Award certainly
is doing just that and doing a good job of it too.
At just 17 years of
age, he’s done something many drivers two and three times his age have failed to do. He won a feature AND finished in the top 10 in
points…in his FIRST season at Mercer. What’s even more
impressive is he finished in the top 10 in points despite missing 5 nights of racing and
beat out 7 others drivers that raced MORE nights than he did.
He had 4 top 5s
against a competitive 358 Modified class. On
only two occasions did he finish out of the top 10. The
first was on June 18 when he was battling for the lead and he and the leader tangled on a
restart ending a chance at a first career win.
That first career win
did come on August 6th in the second 15-lap feature. Despite 5 less laps, Brad Rapp charged from the 10th
starting spot and passed fellow 17-year-old Garrett Krummert in the final turn on the last
lap for the impressive victory.
The second time Rapp
failed to finish in the top 10 was on the Little Guy Nationals. He started off the night finishing 2nd
in his heat and missed the top 10 by just one spot finishing an impressive 11th
in the 30-lap feature against a 51-car field.
Had he competed every
night and maintained his point average, he would have finished 2nd in points
just as he did at his Friday night track
He comes from a family
with strong racing roots. We look for big
things out of Brad Rapp in the future. He
impressed many of us here at Mercer so much in fact that we wanted to award him our
Horizon Award.
Brad…