KINGSPORT, TN :: Anthony Anders survived the carnage at Kingsport Speedway on Friday night to score the win at the Concrete Jungle. Anders led much of the 60 lap race that featured nine cautions and two red flags. Anders took the lead on lap 15 and held off furious charges from Zeke Shell and Blake Jones to score the victory, his first of the 2013 season.
Adam Long scored the fastest qualifying lap for the race but started fourth with an invert, handing the pole to Lee Tissot. Tissot couldn’t capitalize as early problems caused a wheel to fall off his car, ending his race. Long spun on the second lap of the race with a right rear tire failure but fought his way back up to second.
The biggest incident of the day came on lap three when Blake Jones, Paul Nogradi, Hayden Woods, Chad Finchum, Daniel Pope and Kris Van Dyke all got caught up in an accident. Each car was able to continue in the race. For Finchum, it capped off a rough day. His team had to spend a couple hours before the race repairing the suspension after he clipped the wall in qualifying.
After the incident, several teams expressed frustration on pit road over the aggressive driving styles of Jones, Nogradi and Woods.
After the first 20 laps were marred by several cautions, the last 40 were run relatively incident free as the field settled down. First Shell, then Jones both tried to get around Anders on the restarts but, after five laps, Anders was able to take off. It was Anders’ first win since September 15, 2012 for a driver who could be a threat to win the NASCAR Whelen All American Series National Championship.
RESULTS
1. #36 Anthony Anders
2. #3 Adam Long
3. #16 Daniel Pope
4. #87 Hayden Woods
5. #80 Blake Jones
6. #19 Chad Finchum
7. #15 Kris Van Dyke
8. #97 Zeke Shell
9. #64 Tyler Goodwin
10. #22 Ryan Stiltner
11. #00 Bruce Blessing
12. #33 Rick Panell
13. #82 Dean Barrett
14. #26 Joey Trent
15. #32 Robbie Ferguson
16. #02 Paul Nogradi
17. #14 Erika Schmidt
18. #30 Taylor Coffman
19. #66 Austin Peters
20. #76 Alan Hawkins
21. #7 Lee Tissot
