Josh Berry led every lap of both 50-lap NASCAR Whelen All American Series late model stock features at Greenville-Pickens Speedway Saturday night, winning both races in his first trip of the season to the historic half-mile.
Other winners included Joe Satterfield in the super stocks, Bobby Emory in the renegades, Chad Redding in the four-cylinders and Zach Meinders in the pure stocks.
Berry led the field to the green in the first of the two late model features. He took the lead at the start and through the first 10 laps Dylan Hall, Chase Purdy, Cody Haskins and Trey Gibson filled the top five as his teammate, Scott Bishop, held sixth in the TrueTimber No. 88 Chevrolet.
Kenneth Headen slowed at the conclusion of lap 10, drawing the first caution of the race. Berry took off on the restart and opened up a car length lead down the back straightaway.
The top six remained the same until lap 31, when Don Morgan’s No. 2 leaked some oil on the track and brought out the second yellow.
Once the race got back underway, two battles fired up, one for second and one for fourth.
In the battle for second, Hall worked his way underneath seven-time feature winner Purdy and the pair diced for a few laps before Hall got by for good. Meanwhile, fifth-place Gibson – a four-time winner at Greenville this season – made life very difficult for Haskins for the entire rest of the race as they were side by side numerous times.
At the checkered it was the Speedco JR Motorsports Chevrolet of Berry getting the start-to-finish win followed by Hall, Purdy, Haskins and Gibson.
The second of the two scheduled 50-lap main events saw Berry and Purdy sharing the front row for what many expected to be a hotly contested battle. The green flag action lasted just a lap, however, before Tasha Kummer and R.A. Brown crashed on the back straightaway. Both had to be towed to the pits.
Berry would lead to the restart over Purdy, Bishop, Ryan Walker and Kenneth Headen but two more quick yellows would follow. The first was for the slowing No. 41 of Purdy, who dropped out of the event, and the second was for Dylan Hall in the Autobank No. 4, who spun into the outside wall in turn four and took his car pitside for right side repairs.
Hall’s teammate, Luke Sorrow, also pulled in during the yellow and retired from the race at that time. Hall was able to restart prior to the green flag after some quick work by his team.
The lap four restart would find Berry, Bishop, Walker Gibson and Morgan in the top five, but Hall was about to put on a show as he immediately began surging through the field with determination. By lap 21, he was passing Bishop for second in a furious quest to turn misfortune into his second victory of the season.
Hall would fall just under a second short, though, as Berry had built enough of a lead to hang on and make it a perfect sweep – 100 laps led out of 100 laps run in feature competition.
Hall crossed the line in second followed by Bishop, Gibson and Ryan Walker. Bishop justified his opportunity with JR Motorsports and TrueTimber with finishes of sixth and third in the black and camouflage No. 88 after his first two races since 2012.
