The most treacherous track in all of Extravaganza nearly killed Dan Johnston in this event last season. He looks for both personal and seasonal redemption, currently 27th in points without a top-10. He will have to out-speed and out-carnage the greats as we roll 200+ at Talladega.
Race Results
Standings
Schedule
Pole-sitter and points leader Tim McDonnell and Scott Jackson battle hard up front while the treacherous three-wild action commences behind. Scott would 13 laps total before a blown engine late in the going derailed his hard fought effort. He would fall to 24th in the standings.
The big-one occurred on lap 19 from contact between Mike Carroll and Alex Crapser. Both cars flew up the racetrack, sending Matt Raboin up-and-over several times after being crushed between the wall and the other traffic. He came to a stop upside-down on the turn-4 apron, thankfully uninjured. Dalton Lucas and Zakk Miller were also involved, with Miller failing to cross the finish line.
During the first full green flag run of the day, John Tharp, Randy Dobbins, Mark Murphy, Dave Miller, Johnny Reed Foley, Scott Jackson and others all took turns at the helm. It was a relatively clean 40-lap stint, with no cars distictly stronger than the others up front.
After green flag pit stops, Craig Lee teamed up with lapped car Tony Pizzaro to pull away from the rest of the pack by six seconds. It took nearly the entire fuel run for the 16 car pack to run them down, leaving some to believe whether tandem-drafting is the way of the future.
Lap 93 saw contact between Dalton Lucas and Tim McDonnell in the lead pack. Lucas slid up the race track directly into the path of John Tharp, who both slammed violently into the outside wall. Ben Geer had nowhere to go and careened the #88 high into the Alabama air. Both Ben and John were unable to finish the event. Dalton limped home to 32nd.
The previous crash didn't stop the #22. Tim McDonnell dominated the early second-half stretch with a led foot and a whole lot of Top Geer horsepower. Him and Craig Lee appeared to be the two powerhouses of the day, leading a combined 92 laps overall.
A backstretch crash on lap 134 was started by a David Baldinger blown engine. William Perry clipped the #99 as he was slowing down, crashing up the racetrack into Aaron Cummings and Jack Paynter. Connor Germain and David Butterworth were also heavily damaged and spun to the infield. In shades of his teammate, Butter careened into the infield access barrier. Thankfully, he was going four times less the speed of Dan last season.
The final green flag run saw Mark Murphy, Ken Pettit, Craig Lee, Jimmie Stevens and John Battista dominate the show. Cristian Torres, who was the first car to lose the draft on speed early, miraculously led a few laps late and competed for the victory as well. Nobody could make it the distance on gas, as pit stops look to be the determiner once again.
Battista, Bull Werkhesier, and the dynamic QSM duo came out of the pits as the final-four with less than 10 laps to go. Battista made the pass of Bill for the lead early and maintained a car-length ahead of the pack by the 2-to-go mark, Lapped traffic played and enormous factor, leaving Battista and Lee to fight it out coming to the white flag.
Just before the finish, Randy Dobbins and Adam Crapser made contact and slid through the infield grass. Ran
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