Jon Stanbrough wrapped up his fifth King of Indiana Sprint Series championship with a record 17th KISS victory, Saturday night at Paragon Speedway. Taking the lead from Jeff Bland Jr. on the 12 lap, Stanbrough captured his third consecutive KISS finale at Paragon Speedway as Josh Cunningham fought his way to second, followed by Bland, Hunter Schuerenberg and Kyle Cummins.

“I'm happy to win the race and happy to win the championship,” Stanbrough acknowledged later. Then he paid tribute to the owner-mechanics who field his sprint car, “Last night was Steve and Brad (Fox's) 100th win, I'm just happy to be a part of that with them. This is always a nice place to come back down here to Paragon. I can remember when I first came down here, it wasn't the nicest place in the world, but Keith Ford's done a nice job and cleaned it up, got the grass cut and the race track's nice. It's just a nice place to come to now.”

Starting from the pole, Cummins was the early race leader, with Bland, Cunningham, Jon Sciscoe, Brady Short and Stanbrough scrapping for positions behind him. With nearly everyone working the bottom half of the track, Cunningham tested the top initially. Bland raced underneath Cummins going into three on the third circuit, taking the lead cleanly as they exited four. The red flew a lap later, when Jordan Kinser somersaulted in the first turn and walked away without injury.

When Stanbrough moved to the top with the restart, the story of the race changed. While others stayed close to the inside, the Brownsburg driver found that even though the cushion was thin, he could carry enough momentum off the turns to steadily move forward. On the sixth circuit, he swept around both Cunningham and Cummins exiting four and took over second. He caught Bland three laps later, and hustled past going into the third turn. But the distance around the top of the turn was much longer and Bland retained the top lead when they exited. The dance was repeated each of the next four laps, until Stanbrough finally began to pull away.

While the Fox Brothers/Jarvis Enterprises DRC began to deal with slower lapped cars, the battle for second took center stage. Bland, Cummins, Short and Cunningham fought each other in every turn, as they sliced past backmarkers. On lap 21, Jared Harris spun just ahead of Stanbrough, in the first turn, but avoided a yellow when he didn't stall. Stanbrough maintained a lead of a half-straightaway, or more, over the final ten laps, and held that margin at the checkers. Although Short had dropped out, Cunningham moved into second in the closing circuits, and Bland edged Schuerenberg for third.

Stanbrough was one of the few drivers who tried running the top, and obviously he made it work. He said, ”I didn't have a plan to go there, but everybody that was in front of me, obviously was running the bottom, so I had to do something. I wasn't going to get around them following them. I just kept working it, working it and working it. I think maybe I got a little bit better, and the bottom probably slicked off and slowed down a little bit. Most of the lapped traffic played into my hand, they were all on the bottom. That one guy that spun out, did a 360 down there kind of got my attention, but luckily we made it by.”

It was Cunningham's best finish in a KISS feature, and he thought he had an opportunity to win. “The lapped traffic never did fall our way,” he explained. “We'd get up to second and then we'd fall back to fourth through the lapped traffic and finally whenever we got them cleared, we'd start making some progress there toward Jon. I think with a few more laps we could have really given him a run for his money. I think that we were a little bit quicker than him, but the cards just didn't fall into the right places tonight.”

The win gave Stanbrough a 70-point lead over Schuerenberg in the final KISS standings. Ted Hines finished just nine points behind Short, the defending KISS champion, for third.

Peterbilt of Northwest Ohio

Follow Jon Stanbrough on Facebook