Race 4. Winston Superspeedway. 202 Laps, 400 Miles
Race Summary
As we headed into the first super speedway race of the year, the natural expectation was for chaos, especially since the ASCRA had never featured a super speedway on their schedule and drivers who focused entirely on the ASCRA had little experience pack racing, but despite an early crash giving minor damage to Peter Miles, James Chambers, Corey Mason, Jake Leonard, and a couple others, things would remain fairly calm..... errr, clean. Things definitely were not calm. The lead would be exchanged many times among 17 drivers with tons of shuffling in the running order via the nature of pack racing. Cautions would fly a handful of times for a few spins and minor accidents, like the one mentioned above, but it seemed like the first super speedway race of the year would actually manage to pass without any major crashes. As the night moved on, it had become clear that the fastest cars were the 99 of Denny Bryan, the 7 of Marshall Thorton, and the 00 of Pete Tucker. Despite the incredible amount of mixing up of the running order, these three would still manage to combine to spend 138 laps in the lead, and with around 25 to go, these three would find themselves in positions 1, 3, and 4, with Nick Andrews sliding into second. Instead of fighting it out and risking either a crash or major loss in positions, the four cars would stay single-file and begin to create a bit of a gap back to the rest of the pack, with the intentions of making the move for the win late in the race. They would continue to ride it out, with announcers and fans alike making references to “the calm before the storm,” and that’s exactly what it would be. With 4 to go, the group had pulled away by a little over a second from fifth, and Nick Andrews had a massive run on leader Denny Bryan. Andrews would make a move low, but when he jumped out of line, Marshall Thorton and Pete Tucker would stay high. Bryan would move low to block the run from Andrews, but he would be just a bit late, sending the 21 spinning down the track and himself moving back up the track right into the path of the Thorton-Tucker tandem, resulting in a massive crash among those three. For a second, it almost looked like Nick Andrews would be able to make the save, but right as he was about to have it straightened out, his car would swing back up the track into the oncoming pack, resulting in the collection of several others into the crash.
The leaders crash fighting for the win, setting up a Green-White-Checkered finish
After a red flag to clean up the track, the race would resume with Tommy Cunningham in the number 0 leading over teammate James Norman, Lucas Morris, Stan Gordon, and Jason Faulk. The race would come down to a green-white-checkered finish, bumping up the total laps to 205. On the ensuing restart, Cunningham would get a major shove from Morris, though Norman would struggle to get up to speed and fall back in the running order. Lucas Morris would continue to push, and the tandem would jump out by a decent margin, but Stan Gordon, back in 6th after a poor restart, would get a push from Caleb Jordan. The two would have a massive run down the backstretch on the final lap, with Gordon managing to pull alongside Lucas Morris, but Cunningham would drop low to make the block, holding on to take his first win of the season, followed by Stan Gordon in second and Lucas Morris in third.
Tommy Cunningham holds on to take his first win of the season. Sponsor: Valvoline
Results
1. 0, Tommy Cunningham
2. 52, Stan Gordon
3. 55, Lucas Morris
4. 90, Caleb Jordan
5. 16, Tom Johnston
6. 20, Jason Faulk
7. 8, James Norman
8. 34, Taylor Patterson
9. 71, Keller Burns
10. 01, Jared Tyler
11. 18, William Hayes
12. 15, Darren Cannon
13. 10, Seth Nichols
14. 1, Johnny Jennings
15. 60, Carlton Clark
16. 91, Tony Clark
17. 65, Jaime Reed
18. 40, Greg Peterson
19. 66, Peter Miles
20. 08, James Chambers
21. 22, Corey Mason
22. 77, Jake Leonard
23. 99, Denny Bryan
24. 9, Thomas Copeland
25. 45, Clay Harris
26. 5, Ray Kelly
27. 00, Pete Tucker
28. 21, Nick Andrews
29. 95, Rick Cross
30. 7, Marshall Thorton
DNQ: 31, Ross Gill
Lap Leaders: D Bryan (59), M Thorton (41), P Tucker (38),T Clark (13), J Chambers (9), J Jennings (8), S Nichols (6), D Cannon (6), J Tyler (6), J Norman (5), T Johnston (4), C Jordan (3), L Morris (2), S Gordon (2), P Miles (1), G Peterson (1), K Burns (1)