Tempers flared just after a lap six restart when the cars of CE Falk and Derrick Lancaster collided in turn one just a single lap after they went back green.
Lancaster spun to the outside and Falk’s car rested inside the track. Once Lancaster refired his car he took aim for Falk as he came down the track from above him and just narrowly missed him seemingly as a message to Falk for the contact. Lancaster got back to his pit stall and realized his night was done with a rear clip that’ll need to be cut off. He showed Falk his displeasure as he dove by on the track, letting him know he’s #1.
Lancaster remained calm on pit road as the laps wound down to an entertaining race among the leaders. As the race reached its climax with Mike Looney pulling off an incredible win, Lancaster disappeared from the rear of his trailer reappearing at the tech shed as Falk rolled his car in after a fifth-place finish.
Lancaster tried to get Falk’s window net down but Falk managed to keep it up as Lancaster talked to him through it. After threatening to wreck Falk at Martinsville in practice in his words “when it counts”, he gave us his side of the story.
“He just run through me man,” Lancaster told RACE22. “There’s people that’s got a video, he was on the chip and had my wheels up off the ground. He never tried to pass me. All he done is run straight through me.”
Lancaster then explained what he told Falk while kneeling at his window.
“I just told him, hey it’s very simple turnabouts fair play,” Lancaster explained. “I don’t give a shit, I can retire tomorrow. I don’t have to come back, I can sell everything I got and go on my merry way and ride my boat on Saturday. I don’t have to come up here and sweat my fat ass off. I can quit.”
Lancaster later explained off camera that he told Falk that he could either pay for the repairs to his car or he would make sure that he got his money’s worth (paraphrasing).
Falk seemed to be regretful that the two got together and said that up until that moment they had been good friends.
“Derrick’s one of my good friends here man,” Falk told RACE22. “He’s someone I look up to for a long time. He’s a great business guy, one of the last people I want to get into it with. I hate it for him. I’d be mad too. My shit was tore up last week but I just took it and fixed it, unfortunately, it just happened to one of my friends that’s all.”
Falk then explained the incident from his perspective.
“It was right after a restart and Derrick was trying to get going,” Falk explained. “I mean I feel like I had a nose there but I know I didn’t really have position. At the same time, he just hung a left. There’s a lot of room up, he didn’t have to use every bit I was trying to use on the bottom.”
Falk said he tried to apologize when Lancaster came over to him.
“He was just mad and upset and I tried to tell him if it was really my fault, I’m sorry,” said Falk. “I felt like I was still there and his spotter over cleared him. He just hung a left. It wasn’t a thought of me overdriving the corner to get into him, he just hung a left and there’s nothing I could do.”
Both drivers compete full-time at Motor Mile Speedway and both drivers will be back in action next Saturday night for the fifth round of nine races on the schedule for this season. Lancaster has been known to be a man of his word and it should be interesting to see if he follows through with his promise to retaliate against Falk.
Cover photo by Branden Horton.
