Intro
Tuesday night (Jan. 13) at the SageNet Center in Tulsa delivered exactly what “Chili Bowl week” is supposed to feel like: relentless traffic, changing lanes, and a last-five-laps move that flipped the whole night. On Warren CAT Qualifying Night, Oklahoma’s Blake Hahn drove from eighth to the win — and, with it, a guaranteed ticket into Saturday’s championship A-Main.
Key event recap
Hahn’s path wasn’t a wire-to-wire cruise. Zach Daum controlled the early portion out front, but as the race funneled into traffic and the cushion came alive, Hank Davis surged into the lead mid-race. Hahn methodically picked off positions, grabbed second late, then launched the decisive slide job to take command with five laps remaining — holding Davis off all the way to the checkered.
With the Chili Bowl format rewarding Tuesday’s top two finishers, Hahn and Davis both locked themselves into Saturday night’s A-Main picture (and into the Pole Dash pool).
Top 10
- Blake Hahn
- Hank Davis
- Jett Barnes
- Zach Daum
- Landon Brooks
- Corbin Rueschenberg
- Kaidon Brown
- Gavan Boschele
- Kyle Jones
- J.J. Yeley
Performance highlights
Biggest movers
- Gavan Boschele: +16 (24th → 8th) — one of the most eye-opening “survive and charge” runs of the night.
- Blake Hahn: +7 (8th → 1st) — didn’t need clean air early; he built the win in traffic.
- Jett Barnes: +6 (9th → 3rd) — in a Chili Bowl debut, no less.
- Landon Brooks: +6 (11th → 5th) — a steady climb into the top five when the race got messy.
Most points / high-point runs
- Zach Daum didn’t win, but he led early and still came home fourth — enough to earn the night’s high-point honors (and a bonus payout tied to the event’s point fund).
- Context matters here: Chili Bowl prelim nights are built on passing points + qualifying races funneling into the A, so “high point” is often a blend of speed and forward progress — not just the finishing spot.
Quietly strong
- Corbin Rueschenberg (6th) and Kaidon Brown (7th) put in the kind of nights that don’t trend on social media — but absolutely set up a realistic Saturday climb.
- Ty Gibbs (14th) and Ryan Timms (11th) kept themselves within striking distance of better “alphabet soup” positioning, even without a headline result.
Crashes/near-misses
The racing didn’t come caution-free. A multi-car incident early reshuffled the field, and Sheldon Creed’s night ended in a DNF after getting caught up in the A-Main trouble — turning what looked like promising speed into a much steeper Saturday path.
On the broader safety front, the event’s week-long flip count continued to climb, with reports indicating everyone was okay.
What it means/what we learned
Tuesday proved (again) that the Chili Bowl doesn’t reward impatience — it rewards timing. Hahn’s win wasn’t about dominating lap one; it was about staying close enough to strike when the leaders hit traffic and the track finally offered a lane that could stick. Now Hahn and Davis are in the Saturday A-Main conversation by rule, not by hope, and the rest of the Tuesday front-runners shift into “positioning mode” as the week builds toward the 55-lap finale.
