The 2017 CARS LMSC Tour season finale at South Boston concluded one of the tightest points battles in the series’ brief history. Rookie Layne Riggs held the points lead coming into the AutosbyNelson 250, with JR Motorsports teammates Josh Berry and Anthony Alfredo trailing Riggs by four and nine points respectively.
In a race that saw numerous lead changes and close battles for position throughout the night, CARS Tour veteran Deac McCaskill was able to hold off a hard charge from Late Model veteran Stacy Puryear to claim his fifth career CARS Tour victory. While McCaskill and Puryear battled it out for the win, Berry was able to take advantage of Riggs’ misfortunes and cruise to his first career CARS LMSC Tour championship.
“We had a great year,” Berry said after the race. “There were some ups and downs for us, but we still won four races. We missed it with the car tonight, and we didn’t run well as well as we wanted to, but it was good enough.”
The AutosbyNelson 250 started in Riggs’s favor, as he earned the outside pole position after barely missing the pole by one one-thousandth of a second to Philip Morris. Once the green flag dropped, Riggs quickly passed Morris for the lead and attempted to drive away from the rest of the field. While Riggs attempted to hold off Morris and McCaskill for the lead, Berry maintained his position in seventh, while Alfredo struggled to climb through the field from his 20th starting spot, making Riggs the heavy favorite to win his the CARS LMSC Tour title.
However, disaster would strike for Riggs following a caution that ended Thomas Beane’s night. On the restart, Riggs’ transmission broke, which caused him to check up in front of the field, leading to a collision between Craig Stallard and Ronald Hill, which brought out another caution. Riggs’ crew quickly determined that the damage would be too severe to repair, and pushed his car behind the wall, ending a stellar season for the Bahama, North Carolina native on a bittersweet note.
With Riggs out of the race, three-time ValleyStar Credit Union 300 winner Philip Morris inherited the lead. However, it would only take a dozen laps for Morris to encounter a challenger for the lead in Deac McCaskill. McCaskill was one of the few drivers who was able to make the high lane work to his advantage, as he was able to wrestle the lead away from Morris shortly after halfway.
Morris was able to hold steady with McCaskill for several laps, until his motor expired while challenging McCaskill for the lead. Once the race got back going, McCaskill battled hard with Stacy Puryear for several restarts, with Puryear having a crucial lead-change taken away from him due to an ill-timed caution. After a few more restarts, McCaskill began to gain the upper hand on Puryear, and was able to pull away for the victory while Puryear stalled out in second.
While the battle for the lead was taking place, Berry found himself with a mediocre car that was unable to move up through the field. Fortunately for Berry, his teammate Alfredo encountered similar problems near the end of the event, and the two JR Motorsports drivers found themselves mixing it up for a Top 10 position throughout most of the race. When the checkered flag flew, Alfredo crossed the line in front of Berry in ninth, but Berry still had a comfortable cushion on his teammate and secured the CARS LMSC Tour Championship.
“Once Layne went out, my goal was to just finish the race,” Berry said. “We were fighting the car a good bit, but we just had to hang in there and deal with the ups and downs. Anthony got near us at the end, and I knew if I kept Anthony within my sight then we would be fine. You want to race, but at the end it was so much smarter to take it easy and just ride it out.”
With his championship, Berry becomes the third different driver to win the CARS LMSC Tour championship in the three years since the series inception in 2015. Berry plans to defend his CARS Tour title against the usual veterans and a new group of rookies next year, and is also looking at opportunities to run in the NASCAR Xfinity and Camping World Truck Series.
Official results:
1. 08 Deac McCaskill
2. 17 Stacy Puryear
3. 12p Timothy Peters
4. 22 Bobby McCarty
5. 1m Craig Moore
6. 14 Ryan Repko
7. 77 Blake Stallings
8. 01c Jake Crum
9. 8a Anthony Alfredo
10. 88b Josh Berry
11. 18g Ty Gibbs
12. 2p Brandon Pierce
13. 77w Trevor Ward
14. 88 Chris Davis
15. 39 Mike Jones -2
16. 01 Philip Morris OUT
17. 24 Craig Stallard OUT
18. 83 Matt Bowling OUT
19. 15b Kyle Barnes OUT
20. 74 Ronald Hill OUT
21. 99 Layne Riggs OUT
22. 31 Thomas Beane OUT
