Deac McCaskill dominated almost the entirety of the inaugural race for the Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) Late Model Stock Tour but it was Todd Gilliland who scored the victory with a late race pass at Southern National Motorsports Park on Saturday night.

Gilliland’s victory was his first career Late Model Stock Car victory and came on the heels of a second place finish in the Autumn Classic at Southern National last November.  For Gilliland, the son of former NASCAR XFINITY Series winner David Gilliland, the victory was vindicating and satisfying.

“This is crazy in the inaugural Late Model Stock race for CARS Tour,” Gilliland said in victory lane.  “Chris Lawson, my crew chief, coached me through the whole thing.  I couldn’t ask for a better crew chief.  Everyone’s worked so hard over the winter on this new car.  They got this thing so good.  I’m so happy, so proud of everyone.  I didn’t think I could win this race.  The experience that was out there, it’s crazy.  I don’t know, glad I could though.”

McCaskill led 148 of the 150 green flag laps but surrendered the lead in the final two laps to Gilliland who got a run entering turn three after a restart and muscled his way past McCaskill.  While one would expect McCaskill to be sour over the result, he took his second place finish in stride.

“I’m tickled to death,” McCaskill said.  “I didn’t expect to run this well in this series with these rules.  It’s probably the best car I’ve ever had down here.  When you lead like that, you set a pace.  I don’t know if I set a pace a little too hard and burned my tires up.  With every caution we had, I kept losing rear grip.”

After the contact from Gilliland which routed McCaskill out of the lead, McCaskill said he tried to get back to him but said the contact was just good hard racing.

“I spun my tires pretty bad off turn two and Gilliland got under me in turn three and lifted me up and got around me,” McCaskill explained.  “He did what he had to do to win and I tried to hit him back, I just didn’t hit him back hard enough.  That’s part of racing.  I’m not upset about it.  It was good racing.”

Myatt Snider stayed inside the top-10 all race and ended up scoring a third place finish, one he said he and his team were proud of.  Tommy Lemons, Jr. finished in the fourth position and was a factor for much of the late stages of the race.  Tyler Ankrum fought his way to a fifth place finish after having to make the field through the last chance qualifier after spinning in qualifying.

Brayton Haws finished in sixth while RD Smith, Stacy Compton, Blake Stallings and Michael Fose rounded out the top-10.