Following a solid season that saw him finish second in the OSCAAR Super Late Model Points Standings, Kevin Cornelius would be ranked in the 10th spot for the Inside Track Motorsports News/London Recreational Racing Ontario Short Track Power Rankings. The past Sunset Speedway champion was on hand at the Motorama Custom Car and Motorsports Show to accept the honors.
“It was a decent year,” he commented on his 2014 season. “It was good to get those big wins, but we need to put our program a little better together and come out next year with a better run.”
The season didn’t start off as hoped, though, as a pre-season motor issue would force Cornelius to run a pro late model for the season opener at Sunset Speedway.
“Those motors are a funny thing. You have to have oil in them – I didn’t know that. Its $40,000 – you’d think they’d come with oil in them,” he commented. “That wasn’t the way that we wanted to start off the year and we just couldn’t get rolling from there on out. But like I said, we had a pretty good year, as far as speed went; we just have to get past those mechanical errors.”
Beyond the season opener, mechanical errors reigned their hand in the second race of the season at Kawartha Speedway as power steering issues relegated Cornelius to a 14th place finish after running inside the top-five throughout the afternoon. Those issues came back once again later in the year at Peterborough Speedway, with Cornelius leading till power steering issues forced him pit side. His return trips to Kawartha and Peterborough weren’t much prettier, as between the two tracks, his best finish was seventh in the five races.
Though beyond the eastern swing of the province, there was success to be had.
Cornelius would out-duel Andrew Gresel in the final laps of the 50 lap feature at Barrie Speedway to score his first career OSCAAR Super Late Model victory in the third race of the season. The driver of the No. 17 Super Late Model would carry the momentum into the Don Biederman Memorial a couple weeks later, hoping to better a second place effort from 2013. He would start off the weekend solidly, posting a second place finish to Dwayne Baker in the first of the two features. He would then come back on the Sunday night, leading the majority of the feature en route to scoring the victory. As a result of his average finish over the two nights, Cornelius would be crowned the 2014 Don Biederman Memorial Champion.
He was also able to score a pair of third place finishes at Sauble Speedway and Sunset Speedway, before returning to Sunset in September to put forth one of the strongest performances of the year. Despite the power steering letting go early in the race, the sophomore driver pushed forward, taking the lead just before halfway to dominate the rest of the feature and score his third victory on the season.
Now heading into 2015, there are a lot of people that have stated that Cornelius is the championship favourite. However, as of right now, the KDR Motorsports will only be running a partial schedule.
“We actually lost Halton Crushed Stone this year; they’ve been with us for 10, 12 years,” Cornelius commented. “We’re currently looking for a primary sponsor to get us through the 2015 season and as it stands right now, we’re going to run a limited late model season right now.”
