COEBURN, VA :: After taking a race off from his usual Victory Lane celebrations at Lonesome Pine Raceway, Ryan Stiltner returned to Victory Lane for the sixth time in 2013 at Lonesome Pine Raceway after a dominating performance. Stiltner started fourth in Saturday night’s race but had raced his way to the lead on the second lap and never looked back.
“We had a good car tonight. It was a little bit off from normal,” Stiltner said. “We’ll have to work on it some more but that’s six out of eight and a second place finish so it doesn’t get much better than that. Last week’s race was a heck of a battle too. We just came up .006 seconds short. We finally got win number six tonight.”
Adam Gray, who started in second after the top five cars were inverted, scored his career best finish with a second place effort in only his fifth career Late Model start. Gray spent the entire race in the top three, inheriting the second position when last week’s winner, Hayden Woods, had troubles.
“We’ve been waiting for this all season,” Gray stated. “This was my fifth race. We couldn’t have asked for anything better than this. We had a great race the entire time with Hayden Woods and everyone else around us. If it wasn’t for my crew and everybody here, I wouldn’t be racing right now so I’ve got to thank them.”
Woods was the fastest qualifier with a 16.701 second lap but had to start fifth after an invert. He worked his way up to second when a right rear tire went down causing him to spin and have to come to pit road. Woods’ spin on lap 43 was the lone caution of the race. He would rebound to finish in third.
“We had a flat right rear,” Woods explained. “We made a run towards lap 40 on Stiltner. We were catching him but I couldn’t burn my stuff up like that until the end. Then I felt my right rear tire go down and I came out of the corner and knew it was the right rear when it was crooked so I came over the radio and told my guys. They told me to come in so I hit the brakes to come in and when I did, the car just spun around on me. We came back, restarted eighth and came back to third. It was hard fought. If we would’ve had a restart with about 10 laps to go, we could be sitting where Mr. Stiltner is sitting.”
Kevin Wolfe and Derek Woodward rounded out the top five. Jenna Wagner tied her career best finish with a sixth place effort.
“We’ve been gaining every week,” Wagner said of her sixth place effort. “This is the second time we finished sixth this year so we’re gaining little by little. Each week, we gain some speed so we’ll be up there before you know it.”
Joe White, Robbie Ward, Josh Hale and Jeff Woodward rounded out the field.
The 60 lap Late Model feature was part of a Double Points night, allowing Ryan Stiltner to add to his points lead. The next race at Lonesome Pine Raceway for the ASA sanctioned Late Models will be the Freedom Bash on Saturday, July 6th.
