Brayton Haws and Austin McDaniel couldn’t have driven any harder if they tried.
A caution with 20 laps to go on Saturday night set up a head-to-head duel between the two youngsters with Haws holding off McDaniel following a frantic side-by-side battle to win the Late Model Stock Car portion of the CARS Tour event at Hickory Motor Speedway.
Driving for Hawk-McCall Motorsports, Haws had the dominant car of the evening and did not receive his first major challenge until a lap 85 restart when McDaniel beat Haws into Turn 3. It was a clear message that the two-time and defending Hickory track champion intended to defend his home turf against the invading CARS Tour regulars.
Both contenders battled loose handling race cars and were nearly sideways off the exit of Turn 4 with three laps remaining — Haws up against the outside wall and McDaniel running the apron.
With two laps remaining, Haws got a run off Turn 2 and cleared McDaniel on the backstretch. That all but sealed the deal coming to the white flag lap. For Haws, the victory was his second of the season and second in a row in CARS Tour competition.
“That was the most intense and most fun racing I’ve ever been a part of in my life,” Haws said after the race. “Thank God he raced me clean. He’s a really good racer, really competitive, but we got the win. That’s two in a row for us and that’s just really good racing.”
McDaniel believes the final caution with 20 laps to go ultimately cost him the race as he had a long run car compared to Haws’ sprint set-up.
“It was a heck of a race,” McDaniel said. “It was a lot of fun but we came up one spot short. Still, what a great night. We started 10th but came up and led some laps. I hate that last caution came out because it took us 10-to-15 laps to build up our tire pressure. I think we would have had him if not for that caution because it put him back on out back bumper.”
With consecutive wins, Haws extended his championship lead over Myatt Snider (finished seventh), fact that isn’t lost on him or his team.
“We want to maintain that championship lead for the rest of the season,” Haws said. “We’re definitely thinking big picture. Race one was big picture. Winning races and winning that championship are the goals and have been from day one.”
Justin Crider, RD Smith and Tyler Ankrum completed the top-10.
After the race, Tommy Lemons Jr. and Jamey Caudill were caught arguing in the pits. Caudill accused Lemons of running him out of room in the closing stages of the race. Lemons ultimately spun off Caudill’s front bumper with 20 laps to go.
Lemons finished 16th while Caudill had to settle for 19th. The complete results can be found below.
- Brayton Haws
- Austin McDaniel
- Justin Crider
- RD Smith
- Tyler Ankrum
- Shane Lee
- Myatt Snider
- Clint King
- Blake Stallings
- Trent Barnes
- Kyle Plott
- Michael Fose
- Deac McCaskill
- Chris Hudspeth
- Doug Barnes, Jr.
- Tommy Lemons, Jr.
- Stacy Puryear
- Stefan Parsons
- Jamey Caudill
- Jeff Oakley
- Robert Tyler
- Dylon Wilson
- Craig Stallard
- Mike Darne
- Thomas Beane
- Garrett Campbell
- Todd Gilliland
- Payton Ryan
- Roddey Sterling
- Christian PaHud
