Chris Burns dominated for much of Saturday night’s 80-lap Late Model race at Carteret County Speedway, coming away with his first win of the season and his fifth career Late Model win.
In the first half of the race, Burns swapped the lead back-and-forth with Brandon Clements, with Burns picking up the $500 halfway bonus. In the second half, Burns’ car, which was previously driven by “Big Jim” Kelley, came to life and Burns drove away from the field.
“Me and Brandon have a lot of history racing together,” Burns said in victory lane. “It was awesome to be able to race with him again. Looking forward to it all year. The car was pretty good. The first half, I was just trying to save tires a little bit. I think we just made the right adjustments at the halfway break and it paid off pretty good for us.”
T.J. Barron methodically raced his way into a runner-up finish, his best career finish at Carteret County Speedway. Barron was ecstatic about the result.
“We worked on this car all day since we got here this morning,” Barron said. “Thrashing on it. Changed about everything on the front end trying to get it to work. I knew we were a little bit off, just trying to get this thing to travel.”
Clements was in the mix in the first half of the race but, in the early laps of the second half, Clements faded as far back as fifth. He was able to rally for a third-place finish.
“Halftime, the first couple laps, the car was super tight on us,” Clements said. “It came in on us but we already lost so much track position. We got something to definitely build off of and we’ll have a good piece the next race.”
Tyler Horne finished in fourth while Joshua Yeoman finished fifth.
Results:
1. Chris Burns
2. TJ Barron
3. Brandon Clements
4. Tyler Horne
5. Joshua Yeoman
6. Dustin Yeoman
