Braden Chiaramonte Makes Two Main Events at the 39th Annual Tulsa Shootout - Speedway Digest

West Coast open-wheel racing star Braden Chiaramonte finished off his 2023 campaign by qualifying for two main events in the world’s toughest and most prestigious micro sprint car race, the 39^th Annual American Waste Control Tulsa Shootout presented by NOS Energy. The talented teen qualified for a pair of mains giving him three feature starts in three years of competing in the winter racing festival.

In an era when nearly every car and driver entered gets to start the Indianapolis 500, Daytona 500, and NHRA Championship Drag Races, the Tulsa Shootout is different. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Handsome 16-year-old Chiaramonte made the main events in the Hyper Outlaw Non-Wing Class and the Evo Fuel Injection Winged A-Class. He was one of only 24 drivers in each of those main events. The Hyper Outlaw Class saw 380 entries attempt to qualify for the main. Three-hundred-fifty-six of them did not make it. It was even tougher in the Winged A Class when a whopping 394 cars vied for one of the coveted main event positions. Three hundred seventy were packed up and done before the finale.

While making the two main sounds great, Chiaramonte’s effort did not have a storybook ending. In the Outlaw Non-Wing class, he started the main event in 18^th. However, his effort in the 30-lapper was nullified before he completed a quarter of a lap! Starting on the outside of the ninth row, the car inside of him suddenly darted to the right mere seconds after the green flag started the race. The driver clobbered Chiaramonte and punted the gorgeous family-owned #73B into the crashwall. Chiaramonte’s car climbed the wall and his right front wheel was perched on the barrier while the other three were on the ground when he came to a stop.

His car was towed back to the work area and to the disappointment of his team, the damage sustained was enough to knock him out of the race less than three seconds after the green flag! It also saddled him with a frustrating 23rd-place finish.

That crash left Chiaramonte with only one more race to go in “Tulsa Time.” That was the Winged A Class 30 lapper. In that one, the El Cajon, California racer, who drove in several different disciplines of open-wheel cars in 2023, started 15^th. He was destined to finish better than he did in the Non-Wing Outlaw main. Once the race got going, he moved forward and found himself in 11^th. With a lot of laps remaining, it was anticipated he would easily break into the top 10. However, fate intervened and a steering problem forced the likable driver to the sidelines with a 21st-place result.

Overall, Chiaramonte had an impressive week against talent-laden fields. All told, he moved forward in eight of the 12 races he started. That includes two of the wins which came from the pole. Only four times all week did he finish in a worse position than he started in. Included in those were the two mains he did not finish due to being wrecked and having a steering problem. Of the two races he finished where he lost spots, one came when he started on the pole and finished second and the other happened when he started third and placed sixth. Thus, in the 10 races he finished, he picked up 17 positions and amazingly, he only dropped four spots.

With the final event of 2023 out of the way, Chiaramonte and the crew will be shifting in a different direction for the next few weeks. Instead of racing, the team is stripping down the cars and going over them before the start of the 2024 racing campaign. They have some irons in the fire regarding what and where they will be competing, but nothing has been finalized as of yet. An announcement should be forthcoming shortly.

Chiaramonte would like to thank all his sponsors who have made his racing efforts possible. RTL Traffic Control, AM Ortega, Hyper Racing, Chop Design, Adams Motors, Hacienda Casa Blanca Fine Mexican Dining, Evil Plus Injection, King Racing Products, Tiner-Hirst Enterprises, and Keizer Wheels.

Braden Chiaramonte PR