Brandon Clements picked up his third win of the season in the wild first Late Model race on Saturday night, while Clay Jones picked up his third career win in the equally entertaining second race.
Tyler Horne took the lead early in the first Late Model race, but Clements got by him in the closing stages of the 40 lap race. Horne faded to third, then spun around when being challenged for the position by Sarah Cornett-Ching as Clements was under attack from Mini Tyrrell. On the ensuing restart, another incident would take place for a wreck involving Cornett-Ching, Paul Williamson and TJ Barron. Clements would again hold off Tyrrell on the restart to score the victory – his third of the season.
“That kid in the 81 car, Tyrrell, he’s a hell of a driver,” Clements said. “He did everything right, pinching me off on the bottom. We got a little free off the bottom and got into him there. Hats off to him, he’s a freaking wheelman. The car wasn’t where it needed to be. They’ve caught up to us.”
While not as wild, the second Late Model race proved to be every bit as entertaining as the first. After the top six cars were inverted, Clements raced his way to the lead by the fifth lap of the race and looked to go for the sweep. However, Tyrrell would close in on him and take the lead on lap 15 of 40. Clay Jones raced his way to second 10 laps later.
Tyrrell looked like he had the win in hand until a late race caution, when Gerald Benton spun, set up a five lap shootout. Jones got around Tyrrell for the lead, but Tyrrell battled back. Immediately after Tyrrell bypassed Jones, Jones executed a crossover maneuver to get past Tyrrell and beat the field back to the checkered flag for his third Late Model win at Carteret County Speedway.
“It has been a heck of a couple weeks,” Jones said. “We’ve been struggling so bad down here. We made a lot of changes and it worked this time. Had some bad luck in the first race, lost power steering on lap three and these things are horrible to deal with without power steering. I can’t thank everybody who works on this car enough. This car costs a quarter of what these other cars and it runs just as fast, if not better. It shows all the hard work and dedication that goes into this.”
Mini Tyrrell would end up finishing second and third in the two races respectively.
“We were close,” Tyrrell said. “It’s definitely great racing. I couldn’t have asked for a better car. I couldn’t have asked for any better competitors. They raced me completely clean.”
Chris Burns finished third in the first race while Tyler Horne and Rusty Daniels rounded out the top-five. In the second race, Jones’ triumph came over Clements, Tyrrell, Horne, and Williamson.
Results
Late Model race #1
- Brandon Clements
- Mini Tyrrell
- Chris Burns
- Tyler Horne
- Rusty Daniels
- Gerald Benton
- Brandon Hobbs
- Paul Williamson
- Clay Jones
- TJ Barron
- Sarah Cornett-Ching
- Jamie Weatherford
- Dustin Yeoman
Late Model race #2
- Clay Jones
- Brandon Clements
- Mini Tyrrell
- Tyler Horne
- Paul Williamson
- Chris Burns
- Rusty Daniels
- Gerald Benton
- Brandon Hobbs
- Jamie Weatherford
