While Josh Berry and Deac McCaskill were battling for the win during the closing stages of the CARS Tour Late Model Stock event at Orange County Speedway, a championship dogfight was taking place behind them between Brayton Haws and Myatt Snider.

Haws entered the weekend with a one point championship advantage over Snider with both drivers admitting that the intensity was starting to pick up.

Both Haws and Snider faced considerable adversity near the end of the race, having to restart at the rear of the field on Lap 100. Haws was one of at least 10 drivers that blistered their right front completely flat during the event and lost several laps for illegally changing both right side rubbers.

Snider had hood pins come loose on the same lap and was force to restart at the tail end of the field.

Nevertheless, both drivers found themselves on the lead lap after a multitude of cautions and were running sixth and seventh with 10 laps to go. On fresher right side tires, Haws passed Snider for sixth on Lap 116, which resulted in Snider putting the bumper to his championship on the exit of Turns 3 and 4.

As a result, Haws lost the position and took exception to the aggressive move, door slamming Snider on his way back around the 20-year-old. This caused Snider to lose several positions and ultimately spin off the nose of Michael Fose coming to the checkered flag.

Haws finished sixth while Snider ended up 10th. Despite coming up with the upper hand in the duel, Haws was none too pleased with the way Snider raced him.

“We overcame losing a lap and raced our way to the front, got past (Snider) and he decided he wanted to just wreck me for fifth place,” Haws said after the race. “I mean, if he wants to race like that, we’ll race like that all season and into the off-season.

“That’s just dirty driving and that’s not the kind of driver that I want to race against.”

Snider called it the byproduct of racing for a championship.

“I knew Brayton had gotten some new tires so I knew he’d have extra grip so I had to drive in as hard as I could,” Snider said. “I had an idea what would happen but it didn’t turn out that way. It was just hard racing. Championship racing.

“We both had our eye on the prize and were trying to get as much as we could and were definitely driving the wheels off it. We just ended up getting together.”

Unofficially, Haws leaves with a five point championship advantage over Snider. McCaskill climbs to 10 points back with three races remaining. Even though he left frustrated, Haws was pleased that he extending his championship lead entering the next race at Concord Speedway in two weeks.

“Other than that, we had a great race car and we still have the points lead and came out with a sixth place,” Haws said. “I can’t thank everyone for what they do.”

Snider took a similar even-keeled approach.

“We only lost three spot so it didn’t put us too far back,” he said. “We’ll just see what implications this has. My guys have been giving me good cars this year and it definitely showed tonight. What happened tonight was just part of racing.”

Race22.com reporter Zach Evans contributed to this report.