Cole Butcher fends off Ty Majeski’s ultimate challenge to win ASA Slinger

Ty Majeski could have pushed the issue but he wanted the ASA STARS race at Slinger Super Speedway to be decided in clean fashion.

And with that, Butcher is back on top of the ASA National Super Late Models with a $15,000 victory on Sunday night. Majeski won the pole and elected to start at the rear for the ‘Ultimate Challenge’ and a chance at an additional $5000.

Majeski had several chances to root Butcher out of the way, but again, did not take it.

“Just can’t thank Ty Majeski enough for racing me with respect, I’ll race like that any day of the week,” Butcher said after passing inspection. “As long as we both come out 1-2, or at least on the same racetrack rather than in the wall. So can’t thank him enough.”

Majeski said he did rough Butcher up a little bit but was never going to wreck him to win the ultimate challenge.

“Just honestly got beat tonight, just missed it by just a little bit,” Majeski said. “That was one of the more fun races I’ve been apart of. Cole and I were using each other up, within reason. So that makes it fun when you can use a guy up, and he uses you up the same amount back, not just driving it in there and wrecking us both. Really respectful race, but hard short track racing.

“Congrats to those guys, they’re a top level-top notch race team and proud of our group. We had a great car all night long, all day long really, unloaded good. Just needed a little more at the end.”

How far was he willing to go?

“Man I could’ve just drove it into the corner and not turned and cleared him out for sure, but I just didn’t want to win it that way,” Majeski said. “I have a lot of respect for Cole, and their race team and I wanted to win it the right way. I was going to use him up a little bit right… just a groove or half a groove, just take away his run.

“I couldn’t clear him doing that. I didn’t really want to do it anymore than that. Obviously disappointed with second, but like I said, a good step in the right direction for our race team and my season.”

Butcher has turned his campaign back around after a blistering fast start which then turned into a run of bad luck where they broke several axles and were caught-up in some crashes and simmering tension with teammate and championship rival Gavan Boschele.

He finished second to Carson Brown on Friday night at Madison and now follows it up with a statement victory against one of the fellow elites in Majeski.

Is the bad luck past them?

“I’m not going to saying anything,” Butcher said, trying to avoid the jinx. “We’re heading to one of my favorite racetracks, Pensacola Speedway here in a couple of weeks. So yeah, we’ll see if that monkey really is off our back when we get there.”

Stephen Nasse keeps his championship hopes within moderate reason with a third place finish. Derek Kraus responded with a fourth after being involved in two crashes on Friday at Madison.

“It’s refreshing and good to come out of here clean and have a good run after the disaster of a day on Friday,” Kraus said. “I knew unloading here that we were pretty decent. And then once we fired off in the race, we just kind of rode and stayed there in the Top 5-Top 6. It’s really good to come out of here with a fourth-place finish and actually we’re coming back here for the (Slinger) Nationals.”

This top-five also required some extra work after Friday.

“We had to go to the backup on Friday,” Kraus said. “Then we got caught up in a wreck on Friday night in the Madison race. So I pulled in the pits and my dad was like, we have to go home and work on this thing. We got to check them both out, and see which one would be quicker to fix. We planned on running this car at both.

“So we went home, and checked out the car. I think my dad and I unloaded it at 7:30 in the morning on Saturday and we all loaded it up at I think 8:30-9:00p. So we had all hands on deck, everybody came and helped. I’m really appreciative for that, came here and we needed a little bit more. But it all paid off in a way.

“Being able to go home was huge for us. If we weren’t able to go home, I feel like it would’ve been harder than it was; just because we had everything at the shop. And actually Gabe Sommers gave us a door and a fender, so I mean if it wasn’t for them we wouldn’t be able to do it anyways. So thankful for them and also that helped us.”

Luke Fenhaus added to an already terrible weekend as well. He led 131 laps early but crashed on Lap 171 with a flat tire that sent him into the backstretch wall.

Gavan Boschele also limited his championship damage by overcoming his involvement in two incidents to finish fifth.

“Hats off to my crew guys, who worked twice as hard as they had to between me being an idiot in the beginning of the race and this carnage,” Boschele said. “We were really fast, ran second there for pretty much the whole first stage and half the second stage. Pitted off sequence, then ended up getting the track position back, me and Cole did. I feel like I was a little bit better than Ty there at the end, and then I got into it with (Austin) Nason.

“He said he got into the wall there and just kind of got into me. It’s just one of those racing deals, it just happens. But hats off to my guys, I pretty much killed the car because I had to drive back up through the field. Not bad, just a bunch of bad luck.”

ASA STARS El Bandido 300
Slinger Super Speedway
June 15 2025