Scott Lancaster survived the carnage in the second of two Limited Sportsman races at Motor Mile Speedway to score his first win of the 2015 season on Sunday night.
Lancaster got past Ryan Repko, who had a breakout performance, on the race’s final restart with three laps to go and pulled away to score the win. Lancaster, who won the Limited Sportsman championship at Motor Mile, has had strong runs this season, including in the first race, but just had not had enough to get to victory lane.
“We were first or second both practices,” Lancaster said. “Qualified second. It wasn’t nowhere. Because of circumstances, we ended up in the back. It came a week later than I thought it would but I knew [Karl Budzevski and Julia Landauer] were going to get together. I can’t thank this crew. We spent 12 hours yesterday working on this car. You know, what happened to us in the first race, nobody knew. We had 10 pounds of air on the right rear, ran over some debris. Cut a tire down or we could’ve won that race.”
Repko, who inherited the lead after Karl Budzevski and Julia Landauer crashed while racing for the lead. He appeared to be on his way to victory lane until third place driver Dylan Sauls cut a tire and second place driver Jake Ruggles crashed bringing out the caution. The restart proved to be the young driver’s undoing.
“I wanted to win the race,” Repko said. “We came pretty close, just a little bit short. I’m not sure it was the restart, just got sidways getting into one and he was able to capitalize on that … It’s hard to run up front here. A lot of tough competition here. It definitely builds confidence.”
The late race carnage allowed Travis Hurt to race his way to a third place finish – Hurt’s first podium finish in years.
“I hope you’ve got good batteries in this microphone,” Hurt commented. “It’s been a while since I’ve been here. It’s been a long time since I’ve been on this podium. Nobody deserves it more than the fans and the guys helping me. I’ll talk all night as long as you let me. We’ve been working hard and have not seen the results. I’m glad to be here.”
Karl Budzevski won the first Limited Sportsman race over Julia Landauer and Scott Lancaster.
