Tyler Matthews scored the pole and led wire-to-wire in his Carteret County Speedway debut to score the victory in the Stevenson Chevrolet Shootout on Wednesday night.

Prior to Wednesday night’s race, Matthews had scored two career Late Model victories with a win at East Carolina Motor Speedway last summer and a win at Southern National Motorsports Park earlier this year. His success this season has propelled him to the points lead in the NASCAR Whelen All-American Series North Carolina state championship standings.

The 23-year-old from Richlands, North Carolina controlled the pace throughout the entire event, saving tires in the event of a late race caution. In the closing stages of the 75 lap race, Joshua Yeoman raced to second and closed in on Matthews – until Matthews drove away in the final laps.

“We weren’t sure about a late race caution there,” Matthews said. “We didn’t want to use everything we had but once we found out it was probably going to go down to the wire, we just picked it up. I can’t thank my crew enough. We weren’t the greatest when we got here but we got it. It’s my parents’ anniversary so I had to do it for them.”

The game was different at Carteret for Matthews. Instead of chasing points, the pressure was off since Carteret County Speedway is not a NASCAR sanctioned track. That allowed him to focus on just one thing – winning the race and continuing his breakout year.

“We came here and figured we could get a race in, no pressure,” Matthews remarked. “It’s not state points or anything. We just came to win. We weren’t worried about a lot. It was either win or go home and that’s what we came here to do. Our car was like a Cadillac.”

Yeoman, 20, from Fayetteville, North Carolina passed Virginia driver Eric Winslow to take possession of the second spot on lap 31 and went on to finish there. After the race, he felt lapped traffic was the deciding factor in the outcome of the race.

“Lapped cars really got in the way,” Yeoman explained. “[Matthews] had that thing on a rail. Hopefully they’ll come back, we’ll have something for them. I wish we could have been in victory lane but we’ll come back better.”

Winslow, 28, from Danville, Virginia, also made his Carteret County Speedway debut after racing at South Boston Speedway on Friday night in the first of Late Model Stock Car racing’s majors. Following the race at South Boston, Winslow made some adjustments to his car and towed it down to Carteret County Speedway for Sunday night’s race which ended up being rained out.

Unlike most racers, Winslow didn’t come with a pit crew. He rode down to the track solo, slept in his trailer at the track during the week and worked on the car with help setting up for the race from Chris Burns during the week.

“It’s been fun,” Winslow commented. “I’ve really enjoyed being down here at the beach. It’s been kind of mini-vacation. I grew up in Eastern Carolina and moved to Virginia. I miss down here. These guys down here raced real clean and helped out. Chris Burns loaned me so much stuff since we’ve been here. He’s done a lot. I can’t thank the racetrack enough for putting this thing on.”

Tim Allensworth finished in fourth while Jim Kelley finally snapped a streak of bad luck and scored his first finish of the year, finishing fifth.