Saturday night’s 50 lap Mid-Atlantic Street Stock (MASS) Championship Series race at Southern National Motorsports Park had major implications in the championship battle when Greg Barnett, who entered as the points leader, dropped out of the race and Jeff Melton, who entered third in points, also had problems while Sonny Schoffen, who entered second in points, won the race.

Schoffen held off Gary Ledbetter, Sr., one of the region’s Street Stock greats, to score the victory.

“We’ve been getting our butts kicked for about a month and a half and we’ve been working real hard,” Schoffen said.  “We found a little something and this car was hooked up.  It’s very rare that you get one that drives like that for 50 laps.  I would have really liked to race [Melton} and [Barnett].  I think that they might have had something and I hate that they dropped off.  Ledbetter, I’m honored to race that guy.  It was a good, clean race.”

Barnett, who is a four-time Street Stock champion at Southern National, felt he could add to his points lead in Saturday night’s MASS race but the race he looked forward to the most proved to be his undoing.

“Either the rear end or transmission, drive train or something, it’s one of those things,” a dejected Barnett said after the race.  “It’s really frustrating.  We’ve won a bunch of races and championships here and I thought this would be the place that we could really get the lead on them.  It’s just one of those racing deals.”

William Haynie finished third in the race while Ricky Locklair, Jr., Jonathan Kornegay, Tommy Poole, Michael Klein, Mike Ganoe, Tom Bradbury and Ron Flynn rounded out the top-10.

Official Race Results

MASS Street Stock

  1. #75 Sonny Schoeffen
  2. #32 Gary Ledbetter, Sr.
  3. #12 William Haynie
  4. #25 Ricky Locklair, Jr.
  5. #33 Jonathan Kornegay
  6. #3 Tommy Poole
  7. #5 Michael Klein
  8. #82 Mike Ganoe
  9. #00 Tom Bradbury
  10. #66 Ron Flynn
  11. #26 Chris Gordon
  12. #50 Ricky Locklair
  13. #43 David Earnhardt
  14. #6W Jeff Melton
  15. #8 Greg Barnett
  16. ##54 Ted Somero
  17. #56 Wayne Locklair
  18. #6 Michael Jones
  19. #00 Jesse Council – DNS