ROBERSONVILLE, NC – Louis White returned to his winning ways at East Carolina Motor Speedway on Saturday night, winning the 0.375 mile’s season-opening 100-lap event.

A 12-time winner at the Robersonville, North Carolina circuit in 2014, White led 44 laps en route to the victory after getting around Thomas Burbage.

Thomas Burbage started on the pole and led the first 56 laps of the race. However, White stayed closely tucked underneath Burbage’s rear-bumper throughout the race until taking the lead for good on lap 56.

“Thomas is always a good competitor,” White said in victory lane.  “He has a fast car.  I just had to stay on him.  I could see him slipping the back end a little bit off the corner so I was hoping he would eat the rear tire up.  He gave me plenty of room to pass him and I finally got under him.  If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t have won the race.”

Three weeks after winning Southern National Motorsports Park’s season opener, Bradley McCaskill finished second at East Carolina. McCaskill dropped back to seventh on a lap 47 restart, but fought his way back through the field and passed Jeff Shiflett in the closing laps to secure the second place finish.

“It felt like it was further than that,” McCaskill said.  “We got shuffled back on a restart and I guess the old man played the smart card.  Me and Burbage went a little hard and Louis rode around out there.”

After dominating the first half of the race, Burbage settled for a third place finish.

“Our car didn’t want to go on the restart, tight in the center,” Burbage said.  “Bradley got by me and started running Shiflett down.  I kept good pace with Bradley and it looked like Shiflett used his stuff up so I held back and let Bradley do the work and I followed through.”

Jeff Shiflett faded in the closing laps to finish fourth and Kenneth Mercer methodically raced his way to a fifth place finish.  Haley Moody started on the outside pole but quickly dropped to the rear of the field with handling issues before rebounding for a sixth place finish while Rusty Daniels, Shelton McNair, Wesley Johnson and Joe Shannon rounded out the top-10.

RACE22.com’s Andy Marquis contributed to this report.

Unofficial Results

1. #7 Louis White
2. #18 Bradley McCaskill
3. #9 Thomas Burbage
4. #01 Jeff Shiflett
5. #24 Kenneth Mercer
6. #50 Haley Moody
7. #16 Rusty Daniels
8. #M3 Shelton McNair
9. #J12 Wesley Johnson
10. #08 Joe Shannon
11. #99 Zach Henshaw
12. #8 Brian Whitehurst
13. #45 Gary Young, Jr.
14. #6 Tommy Cherry
15. #21 Billy Townsend — DNS