Steve Wallace (66) battles with Bubba Pollard (26) during the running of Saturday night’s CARS Racing Tour Super Late Model race at Orange County Speedway. Wallace went on to score the victory. Photo by Kyle Tretow / CARS Tour
Steve Wallace made the most of a late-race restart to muscle Bubba Pollard out of the way and fend off Matt Craig’s aggressive advances in the final two laps of Saturday night’s CARS Racing Tour Super Late Model race at Orange County Speedway in Rougemont, North Carolina.
Meanwhile, Deac McCaskill dominated the Late Model Stock portion of the event.
The Super Late Model feature featured a new, unique format, as the event was scheduled with four varying-length stages with breaks in between for adjustments and pit stops.
Cole Rouse and Brandon Setzer brought the field to green from the front row, with Rouse easily leading the opening 35 lap segment from start to finish. His Kyle Busch Motorsports teammate, Christopher Bell, was not so lucky. Racing with Brandon Setzer for third, Bell and Setzer made minor contact in turn three, sending Bell’s Toyots into a spin which resulted in contact with the outside wall. Though able to continue, he was not a factor the rest of the night.
Rouse shot out to the lead once again in stage two, until Stephen Nasse lost control of his car on the frontstretch and pounded the outside wall. On the ensuing restart, Rouse spun the tires and stacked up the field, giving Senoia, Georgia’s Bubba Pollard the opportunity to lead for the first time on the night. Pollard held the top spot until the lap 100 break, earning an extra $500 for the mid-race stage win.
The vast majority of the field took tires during the lap 100 break to prepare them for the 50-lap dash to the finish. Those who took fewer tires started ahead of those who more, leaving Jeff Batten (none) and Tate Fogleman (two) on the front row. Chase Purdy and Brandon Setzer took three tires and restarted in row two ahead of a plethora of others who bolted on four sticker Hoosiers.
Fogleman quickly rocketed to the lead but it was short-lived when Bubba Pollard reeled him in and reassumed command of the race on lap 110. Pollard continued to set the pace handily over Wallace, who finished the penultimate stage in second prior to the final break on lap 135.
On the restart, Pollard nearly missed his turn-in point in the first corner, allowing Wallace and others to challenge for the lead, but he quickly gathered himself to begin pulling away for what appeared to be a $10,000 payday until a last-lap caution slowed the field prior to the checkered flag.
Per CARS Tour rules, the entire field must take the white flag for the race to complete and a small handful of cars had not when Kodie Conner and Lucas Jones tangled in turn one to facilitate the final caution period of the night.
With two laps remaining, Pollard gave Steve Wallace the bottom lane into turn one and Wallace took full advantage of it. Pollard turned into the first turn early, making minor contact with Wallace, sending Pollard’s car up the hill and opening the door for Wallace, Matt Craig and others to shuffle around the Georgian as the field came to the white flag. Craig made a last-corner desperation attempt to steal the lead in turn three, door-slamming Wallace and sending both cars into a slide, but Wallace won the drag race to the checkered flag and the richest payday in CARS Tour history ahead of Craig, Rouse, Dawsonville, Georgia’s Spencer Davis and Pollard.
“That was good, hard racing, man,” an exhausted and overheated Steve Wallace said. “Me and Bubba have raced really hard over the last few years, but it is what it is, it’s a big win, we’re racing for 10,000 bucks right here. It just feels good to win. These Jet Tools guys work so hard, and it’s just me at the race shop, and we dig as hard as we can. All these boys come in and work their tails off for me, and we couldn’t do it without Jeff Fultz and Fury Racecars, they built me one hell of a machine. I’ve raced my whole life and never been this hot. It was scorching out there, but we won the race, and we sure as hell are going to win the party, I’ll promise you that.”
“I like Bubba, he’s a really good friend of mine, but I came here with all the friends I need and I’m going home with ’em too and I ain’t worried about it,” he continued when asked about recent scuttlebutt from Pollard on the way he has been raced across the country. “That’s just racing, man. All these fans paid a good amount of money to come see this race and I feel like we gave ’em one hell of a show tonight.”
In the Late Model Stock feature, Josh Berry led the field to the green flag for the 100-lap event.
No sooner than the race began, chaos ensued when Stefan Parsons and Tommy Lemons, Jr., got together in turn three on lap 8, bringing out the first caution of the night. Parsons and Lemons continued while Terry Dease was eliminated from the race due to crash damage.
Six laps later, a multi-car incident in turn three sparked by contact between Chris Denny and Ryan Repko eliminated Denny and Chris Davis, while damaging the ride of Brandon Grosso.
After the last early-race restart, McCaskill motored around Berry and began to pull away from the field. During the mid-race run, Ronald Hill clawed his way to the front in the best run of his CARS Tour career and began to close in on McCaskill for the race lead.
McCaskill began to pull away from the field until lap 91 when Stefan Parsons and Ty Gibbs were involved in the scariest incident of the night. The pair made contact on the exit of turn two while racing inside the top ten and the aftermath sent Gibbs onto his roof, sliding the length of the backstretch in a shower of sparks and ultimately bursting into flames once the car came to a stop. Gibbs emerged from the accident unscathed.
With nine laps to go, McCaskill was forced to fend off Ronald Hill on a restart, a task he handled with precision. As he pulled away to his fourth career series win, Hill dealt handily with Berry, Jared Fryar and Layne Riggs as he led them across the line to complete the top five.
“We had such a great racecar, and it kept getting better,” McCaskill said. “It started to get a little tight in one and two, but I just had to back my corner up. We just had killer drive off tonight. I just can’t thank my guys for all their hard work yesterday when we got the car driving good, but it seemed like we worked on it more today to try to get the drive off the corner and it paid off. We’ve been working our butts off on this car, and we’ve been off and I haven’t been my normal self, but this race is special. I grew up racing here and learned from a lot of those guys. I think it’s been 2003 since I’ve won a late model stock race here.”
“Ronald’s a tough guy and he’s hungry, he’s definitely hungry for a win” he continued when asked about his earlier days where he raced Hill and his father, among others, during weekly shows at the track. “We were up there talking about our age earlier, but this was a good run for him here with his hometown crowd, and he needed this living just a few miles from here. We really appreciate the CARS Tour and all these fans coming out, what a great turnout with all this hot weather.”
The CARS Tour visits Hickory Motor Speedway for the inaugural Throwback 276 on August 5. For more info, visit CARSRacingTour.com.
CARS Racing Tour
Orange County Speedway – Rougemont, NC
Mid-Atlantic Classic – July 22, 2017
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Super Late Models
1. 66 Steve Wallace
2. 54 Matt Craig
3. 51 Cole Rouse
4. 55 Spencer Davis
5. 26 Bubba Pollard
6. 8 Tate Fogleman
7. 97 Chase Purdy
8. 6W Matt Wallace
9. 99 Raphael Lessard
10. 49 Jeff Batten
11. 34 Nolan Pope
12. 4 Christopher Bell
13. 37 Mike Speeney
14. 16 Lucas Jones – Accident
15. 45 Kodie Conner – Accident
16. 5 Trevor Noles – Mechanical
17. 6 Brandon Setzer – Mechanical
18. 51N Stephen Nasse – Accident
19. 118 Bradley McCaskill – Mechanical
20. 98 Jody Measmer – Mechanical
21. 28 Jared Irvan – Engine
Late Model Stock Cars
1. 08 Deac McCaskill
2. 74 Ronald Hill
3. 88b Josh Berry
4. 81 Jared Fryar
5. 99 Layne Riggs
6. 8 Anthony Alfredo
7. 14 Ryan Repko
8. 32 Brandon Grosso
9. 28 Chris Hudspeth
10. 2 Myatt Snider
11. 98 Stefan Parsons – Accident
12. 18 Ty Gibbs – Accident
13. 44 Justin Johnson – Mechanical
14. 61 Justin Hicks – Mechanical
15. 42 Tommy Lemons – Mechanical
16. 1 Craig Moore – Mechanical
17. 2d Chris Denny – Accident
18. 88 Chris Davis – Accident
19. 06 Terry Dease – Accident
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