2012 Round of Decatur qualifying races

The 2012 Round of Decatur qualifying races were a series of four qualifying races designed to set the remainder of the starting grid for the 2012 Round of Decatur.

Pre-qualifying
Three 12-lap races were held to whittle down the 112-car field to 42 for the main qualifying race.

Race one
The top 14 finishers in this race advanced to the main qualifying race.

Cody Keaton earned himself an Active Time Penalty for being a moron on lap 1 and spinning Noelia Castillo in the Snake. Gaspar de Sousa and Patrick Eichholtz were both running in transfer spots before their pit crews decided to suck.

Failed to advance
Newly-crowned TM Lights champion Troy Adams, Independent's Trophy winner Gaspar de Souza and Packer Carroll were among the notable names not to advance from Race 1.


 * Zoe Carter
 * Ben Atkins
 * Cyrus LaTerza
 * Grigoriy Novakovsky
 * Bob Stephans
 * Jacob Eichholtz
 * Troy Adams
 * Packer Carroll
 * Calvin Hobbes
 * Quan Xing
 * Stan Rosenstreter
 * Gaspar de Sousa
 * Patrick Eichholtz
 * Tom Moore
 * Morgan Hamburg
 * Tyson Lautenschlager
 * Noelia Castillo
 * Alli Culotta
 * Cody Keaton
 * Reese Biehn
 * Kurt Plissken
 * Brian Morris
 * Yevgeny Kuznetsov
 * Adam Verschuren

Race two
The top sixteen cars from this race would advance to the main qualifying race.

On Lap 2, Richard Scott dumps the No. 20 of Mika Tervo under the hotel, and gets an Active Time Penalty as a result. Tiffany Matthews ended up right into this mess, and loses a lap due to damage and the incompetence of the pit crew.

Jacob Kard's Manticore drops a valve and his hopes of pre-qualifying end then and there.

On Lap 7, Archer Bomgartner is pushed off course by Nils Tolonen and retires from right front suspension damage. He merges onto the track and takes out Ike Durbin.

During the pit stop cycle, Treven Terrell's team rolled the dice and didn't take tires, vaulting him from 24th to 9th. This is also the first time a Tutino has passed pre-qualifying for a Special Event.

Wernstrom is faster than they were at Indianapolis, and Friedrich Jaeger storms from 11th on the grid to third in four laps before battling with Nosova for the entire race. Fans were pretty sure on about four occasions that they were going to have a really, really big crash, but they didn't.

Lev Azarov dominated the race, leading 11 of the 12 laps.

Failed to advance

 * Jacques Bouvier
 * Jefali Animiha
 * Nick Dawson
 * Barton Sandy
 * Kyle Eckerton
 * Justin Keith
 * Phil Nelson
 * Kraig Mummert
 * Denis Predikin
 * Paul Lyons
 * Kiriki Hetsuno
 * Jim Hayes
 * Richard Scott
 * Nils Tolonen
 * Belen Koumoundorous
 * Mariano Zavala
 * Joel Rodriguez
 * Dan Richards
 * Tiffany Matthews
 * Ike Durbin
 * Archer Bomgartner
 * Chris Allen
 * Jacob Kard
 * Mika Tervo

Race three
The top fifteen cars from this race would advance to the main qualifying race.

Andrea Kinasa's car never started, and earned a "failed to pre-qualify" on the spot. Scott Steudler's Tonare blew up as he was going to take the green.

A massive pileup coming out of the Snake is triggered by polesitter Blake Camphausen being a bit of a fool by shoving Antero Virtanen off under the hotel. You know where this is going, right? Actually, you don't, because everyone avoided him except Michael Madrigal, who piled into the 15 car like a fool, and Bill Calhoun, who personified wrong-place-wrong-time. Meanwhile, Makoto Yamada was doing some rallycross in the sand, kept it going, but was a ways back.

Damien Snyder, who started 4th, emerged in first.

Still on Lap 1, Cameron Taylor got shoved off the track by Johnny Callon coming out of Tyson's Bend, and took Callon into the Armco far off on the left side, sending Taylor on a spectacular set of cartwheels which might make it into the Round of Decatur Pre-Race. He wasn't seriously hurt from the crash.

Also on Lap 1, Azuma Kazeyama ran over the damaged car of Virtanen in the last corner, spinning the No. 51 car around and causing some shenanigans behind him. He also earned himself a 30-second Active Time Penalty.

Dmitry Kosolov and Elina Varjo contrived to take each other out on lap 2.

After that, the halfway pit-stop resulted in Scott Bates taking the lead from Snyder and not looking back. Bates won the race, unsurprisingly.

The major shockers in Race 3 were Tommi Arjanien (with rumors already suggesting he might get the Kallela Motorsports Neste Oil paintjob for the race, should he qualify), Craig Jonser, Larson Jensen, and Chuck Bloomers, making his first race appearance in a year, who was the beneficiary of the time penalty given to Kazeyama.

Failed to advance

 * Erik Draachreider
 * Makoto Yamada
 * Vijay Pushanda
 * Antero Virtanen
 * Akira Ishikawa
 * Vladimir Simonov
 * Carlos Donzelo
 * Jose Luis Martinez
 * Azuma Kazeyama
 * Bill Calhoun
 * Natalie Kendall
 * Jeff Fischer
 * Vitaly Karpenko
 * Charlie Waters
 * John Wargle
 * Dmitry Kosolov
 * Elina Varjo
 * Blake Camphausen
 * Dean Thompson
 * Michael Madrigal
 * Cameron Taylor
 * Scott Steudler
 * Johnny Callon