Jason Feger announced he was dropping off the Summer Nationals tour ahead of the series’ race at I-96 Speedway and he’s now shared a more in-depth explanation as to why.
Initially Feger said in a post to Facebook, “Peace out, Summer Nationals … what a ride 
its been fun, but after tonight at I-96 Speedway, we’re rolling back to the Land of Lincoln 
“
“This tour had a little bit of EVERYTHING — snagged a few wins 
, hit some new tracks 
, dodged (and didn’t dodge) the rain 
, and had some ongoing conversations with those lovely tire demons 
Safe to say… they won a few rounds 
Now it’s time to tighten things up and find some more GO fast 
.”
Instead of closing out the Summer Nationals at Crystal Motor Speedway and Oakshade Raceway on Friday and Saturday night, he will race at Farmer City Raceway on Friday and Fairbury on Saturday night.
Finally, he congratulated Tanner English on winning the overall title, “Shoutout to Tanner English and crew for being on it all series. Congrats on the title.”
After finishing third at I-96 Speedway he said in his podium interview, he shared “They call it the Hell Tour for a reason. It’s a long tough month. We’ve had a lot of good luck on it. To leave with 5 wins we’re really happy. We kinda didn’t set out to win the points, we set out to win races. So we did that. We’re going to go home and regroup and get ready for a bunch of big money coming up. Tanner’s just been phenomenal like he’s only been off the podium I think once or twice. That’s what it takes to win the championship. Congrats to him.”
Now, in a video uploaded to YouTube, he provided more details, “Honestly, if you listen to any of my interviews, even over all the years past and look at all my history throughout the years, very few times I’ve actually ran the whole complete tour. You just got to do what makes sense for you and your team at the right time. And I’ve said all year that we weren’t going to run it, more than likely we weren’t going to run it. I’m not saying we wouldn’t have, but it never was in my plans to run them all this year.
“If you listen to what I said last year I didn’t want to do it last year either,” he continued. “Last year, the guys really wanted to do it. David and Kiwi had never won a championship and Redbeard wanted a second one. We hadn’t won one together and I hadn’t won one with my daughter. So it was a little bit more important, but we’ve been there, we’ve done that. So we didn’t need to do it again.”
“At the end of the day, our consistency hasn’t been where it needs to be. We have a new car that we’ve ran like 12 or 14 times. It’s been okay, but it’s not what my cars typically are. So we’ve been primarily running one car,” he added. “And we got a lot of big money coming up. We’re going to try to get refocused on this MARS Championship. Got the PDC coming up, Cedar Lake. You’ve got two Flo races the weekend before there. So we’re going to get this new car out. We think we found a few things that we had messed up and we’re going to go apply that to this new car.”
Next Feger said, “Nothing about taking my own ball ’cause we’re not going to win the championship, about anything like that. Truth be known, if we would’ve pry not had so many rain outs we probably wouldn’t even have went to Montpelier or I-96, but Montpelier was really good last year and a lot of fun so we thought we’d do it again. And I-96 has been typically really good the times we’ve been there. So I’m glad we did.”
From there, he noted how he was locked into second and Tanner English had locked up the championship and the overall championship only pays $10,000 so “money-wise it really doesn’t change anything. I’m better off to refocus my program on all of those big money races coming up. So, that’s been my goal.”
“We just set out to win races. I hate points racing,” Feger declared. Yes, I’ve done it a bunch, but it’s no fun. Everybody would tell you that.”
Additionally, he concluded, “When you’re gone on the road, everything’s getting neglected, stuff’s not getting done like it needs to get done, things at the shop. We’re really busy back here with other things and it’s just time to get regrouped and refocused. And focus on the big money second half of the year. That’s what I felt like is best for my program and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Feger went to Fairbury on Saturday night and picked up the feature win. He now has 11 wins on the season in 41 events. He’s expected to be back in action next weekend when the MARS Championship returns to action at Farmer City on July 17th and Charleston Speedway on July 18th. Feger is currently second in the points. He’s 93 points behind current leader Ryan Unzicker.
Furthermore, as he noted, he’s firmly in second place in the overall points. Ever after dropping out after I-96, he has a 226 point advantage over third place running Mitch McGrath and 284 point lead over fourth place Frank Heckenast Jr.
0 Comments