Home sweet home.
Those words ring truer for Bozeman, MT’s Cole Schroeder as he’s followed the American Sprint Car Series through his first Frontier Speedweek, a six-race stretch between Montana and Wyoming.
Before the trip through his home state, the ASCS Rookie of the Year contender has endured being outside of his comfort zone at the larger facilities on the National Tour.
“We definitely learned and made a lot of progress on our bigger track package,” Schroeder said. “It’s helped a lot to go into some tracks where it’s more of my style of being mostly technical and small. That definitely helped us throughout the year, make a little more progress. We’ll just try to keep it in one piece and make more strides the rest of the year.”
Before entering the first weekend of the swing at Big Sky Speedway and Sheridan Speedway, Schroeder earned his first three top-10 finishes of the year in consecutive races at Benton Speedway, Creek County Speedway, and 81 Speedway.
During the hot summer months, Schroeder’s best performance came at Texarkana 67 Speedway, where he drove to a fourth-place finish for his first Series top-five. He also earned his first USCS Feature win on Independence Day weekend at Magnolia Motor Speedway.
“Going to those tracks, it brought back to kind of being in California,” Schroeder said. “It was huge for us to get that win at Magnolia, then Texarkana was similar in being my way of racing with how small and technical it was. It’s where we excel more than others, and it’s important to capitalize on that.”
The first night at Big Sky saw Schroeder make the Feature through the Last Chance Showdown, then earned Hard Charger honors with an eight-place charge to finish eighth.
The final day saw immediate improvement from Schroeder after winning his Heat race and the Honest Abe Roofing Dash to start on the pole in the $10,000-to-win Feature. He ran inside the podium throughout the rain-shortened that rewarded him with a career-high second-place finish in the finale.
“I feel great,” Schroeder said. “I wish we could’ve got a chance for the lead in traffic. Other than that, it was a great run, and hopefully we can carry the momentum throughout the rest of the couple weeks up here. It definitely brings a lot more confidence into the rest of the swing, and I’m happy to represent Montana like this. We’ll keep building off of it and see if we can pick off a win here or there.”
While an accident on the final lap on Sunday at Sheridan ended his chances of a top-10 result after running in seventh, he’ll have an opportunity to regain the steam near his Bozeman home. On Friday, Sept. 4, the Series will travel to Belgrade, MT’s Gallatin Speedway before closing the weekend with the Montana Roundup at Electric City Speedway on Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 5-6.
While Schroeder has visited the tracks, he’s never turned laps around them in a 360 Sprint Car. With his experience gained from the National Tour, he’ll use the growing notebook to complete the season with Rookie of the Year honors and a strong points finish.
“I’m just gonna try to see what we can do out there to be there at the end,” Schroeder said. “To a point, just watching through the years of how the track progresses and being on top of it from that standpoint.
“It’ll mean a lot to get Rookie of the Year and hopefully finish it out strong. If we can get lucky and push for a top five, it’s definitely helped us a lot running this year on the National level compared to staying local. Just for the learning and the growing from running against better drivers.”
Schroeder will prepare for the final leg of Frontier Speedweek with Gallatin Speedway on Friday, Sept. 4, and Electric City Speedway for Montana Roundup on Saturday-Sunday, Sept. 5-6.
Where can you find Gallatin info? Click here.
Where can you find Electric City info? Click here.
Where can you watch every lap of the American Sprint Car Series? Live on DIRTVision.
