Kitchen: “It Was Cool, We Respected Each Other”

Also, I felt like lappers got more in your way than his way.
What’s funny, especially there [the three onto the table] it almost happened there [slowed by lappers] more [often] to me. So that was the unfortunate part. Overall though, I felt great, you know?

And then there was even a high five and some talking afterwards. So now we are friends?
[Laughs] I haven’t spoken to him in a long time and for him to come up me and tell me it was good, I don’t know. It was cool, we respected each other. I hope that we’re gonna keep racing each other hard like that. But at least it felt good to do that. I don’t like that kinda shit [talking that is] going on too much. I just want to have good fun battles like that and that’s what we had tonight.

I thought it was alright because no one ended up on the ground.
For sure. I am going to watch back, obviously, but there was nothing that I was like, “Really dude?” I actually almost landed on him one time and I was like, “Dude, that would have been bad.” But that was nobody’s fault, I didn’t know where he was going to go. He likes to look over the shoulder, so I never know which way he’s going to go afterwards, so I almost landed on him.

Correct me if I’m wrong but you didn’t do that line after the first turn until the main. So how did you figure that out?
Yeah, I had that in my pocket from practice. I did it in qualifying once, knew it was good. And before the race I told myself this could be the game changer for me. And dude it was pretty good the way I was doing it.

After three second place finishes in a row, Kitchen now sits fifth in points. Meanwhile Deegan has won that last five races and sits comfortably in the lead with 35 points over second. Deegan admitted in the post-race press conference that that points lead was in the back of his mind during the race, and he was not willing to risk it:

“It's nice to win but a good battle makes each of us get better, you know? And I feel like I needed that too if I want to keep excelling in my racecraft, going back and forth like that. And I figured eventually someone was going to put up a challenge. It was good. I kind of made a little mistake there in the middle. That red cross, I was so scared to jump, I didn’t know whether I was good or not and I was losing time and Levi got me. I just played it by lap, played it smart. I mean obviously I have such a huge points lead I am not going to be stupid just to try to lead a race.”

Also, Deegan felt with the track conditions slowing the pace, they were not putting either one at risk (in his words).

“I agree it was getting a little rowdy, but we were going so slow on that track that our running into each other, whenever I would run into him, it was so minor, we were hitting each other so slow there’s not too much that could go bad. And I don’t know, I just wanted to win. I was like, ‘I want to keep my streak going. I’m not going to lose like this.’”

Kitchen echoed the same about the slower pace making the aggressive moves a lot less risky.

Even with the game of cat and mouse Deegan and Kitchen were playing, they were still extending their lead over Max Anstie in third. So, their pace was not slow by any means. But it sure was exciting to watch. Now the series heads to Arlington and fans will have to wait four weeks to see another Deegan/Kitchen battle at the East/West showdown in Birmingham. Showdowns bring their own set of drama, so it will be interesting to see what happens when the likes of Seth Hammaker, Cole Davies and more are added to the mix.