Kelly Kingery led one lap in the first Late Model duel at Franklin County Speedway on Sunday, but it was the lap that mattered.
Dennis Holdren started on the pole and led the first 34 laps, but Kingery has closed in on him in the final laps and was applying pressure for the lead. Kingery was able to muscle his way past Holdren entering turn one on the last lap and held him off to score the win.
“Hats off to Dennis Holdren and the rest of these gentlemen out here,” Kingery said. “You come here and you’re going to find some competition. It’s here. I roughed Dennis up there a little bit on the last lap. I knew I had to move him, he was pretty stout. I moved him and took the lead.”
Holdren was not upset with Kingery. After the race, Holdren congratulated his fellow veteran on his win and said Kingery just did what he had to do to score the victory.
“The driver knows what’s going on and we were just going away and he was getting better,” Holdren said. “We just got a real loose entry going into each corner and I was catching it, so I was whoa-ing it up. I was doing everything I could to block him and that’s what it results in. We did the best we could.”
Ross “Boo Boo” Dalton finished in third while Mike Looney and Devin Steele rounded out the top-five.
After an invert, Kyle Dudley started on the pole and led every lap in the second Late Model feature on his way to victory lane as he starts his pursuit of a fifth Franklin County Speedway track championship.
“These guys were just say faster than us today, we weren’t that great,” Dudley said. “We made a couple changes and got it a little better the second race but it still wasn’t perfect. Luckily we started out front thanks to the invert and got just enough ahead to stay ahead and didn’t get any cautions. Things just kind of went my way that second race. You win some and lose some that way. We just kept digging and we never gave up and here we are.”
Ross “Boo Boo” Dalton, who finished third in the first Late Model feature, finished in the runner-up spot in the second Late Model race.
“We have a lot less motor than these guys and it kind of hurts us on the starts because we can’t just motor around and they blow our doors off at the beginning,” Dalton, who runs a crate engine, said. “I can’t thank these guys enough. We had an awesome race car. We saved tires the first race and got to racing Mike Looney in the second race and it held us up. We finally got by him and went out to the front and, when I finally got there, they were a little far out ahead of me and I ran out of time.”
Holdren finished in the third position while Kingery and Steele rounded out the top-five.
On top of his two podium finishes in the Late Model races, Holdren also picked up the win in the Mini Stock feature race, beating out his younger brother, Drew. Jason Warsing scored the win in the Street Stock event. Tony Housman held off Larry Isley, Jr. and WJ Altizer to score the win in an exciting U-CAR feature while Jeff Davis won in Mini Cups and Johnnie Johnson held off Wayne Lawson to win the East Coast Flathead Ford race.
Franklin County Speedway will return to racing on Sunday, April 23rd with an event headlined by a 75-lap Late Model race as well as Open Wheel Modified racing. Mini Stocks, Street Stocks, U-CARs, Mini Cups and the East Coast Flathead Fords will also be in action.
Unofficial Results
Late Model Duel #1
- Kelly Kingery
- Dennis Holdren
- Ross Dalton
- Mike Looney
- Devin Steele
- Kyle Dudley
- Jonathan Hall
- Daniel Hutson
- Wesley Thomason
- Chris Carroll
- Timmie Hylton
- Bobby Gillespie – DNS
Late Model Duel #2
- Kyle Dudley
- Ross Dalton
- Dennis Holdren
- Kelly Kingery
- Devin Steele
- Bobby Gillespie
- Jonathan Hall
- Daniel Hutson
- Timmie Hylton
- Chris Carroll
- Mike Looney
- Wesley Thomason
