LUCAMA, NC – Mike Darne and Rusty Daniels both scored their first Southern National Motorsports Park victories of the season on Saturday night.
Darne scored his first Late Model win since August 31, 2014 with his victory in the first of two 35 lap Late Model races. Darne dedicated the win to longtime crew member Tommy Hartman who passed away on May 4, 2015. Darne, who led wire-to-wire to score the victory, was emotional in victory lane after scoring his third career Southern National Late Model victory.
“Tommy was such a great supporter of mine and such a good friend,” Darne said. “We lost him at the beginning of the year. We’ve had a real tough year this year with being in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wanted to come up here and run this and god a win for Tommy at the racetrack he loved the most. It’s great. All in all, the car was just great. This one was for Tommy Hartman for sure.”
Darne’s toughest competition during the evening was Rusty Daniels. Daniels finished second in the first race while Tyler Matthews, fresh off a win at East Carolina Motor Speedway a couple weeks ago, finished third. Kate Dallenbach, who started second, recovered from an early race incident to finish fourth while Andrew Grady rounded out the top-five.
Daniels would go on to score the win in the second race after starting in the seventh position but raced his way to the lead on lap 12 and drove away in the caution free race. Daniels’ victory was vindicating after being wrecked in the July 11th race off the front bumper of Andrew Grady. The win was Daniels’ first win of the season at Southern National and his second overall Late Model win of the season.
“It feels great to come back and win, especially with an old car that we haven’t run here all year” Daniels said. “We came back and made a little adjustment from the first race and got us a win. It feels awesome, it does. It feels great to be back to winning form. Now we have to do it the rest of the year to make [NASCAR Whelen All-American Series] state points all we can.”
Mike Darne started at the rear of the second race in hopes of collecting a bonus that he would have won if he had scored the victory. The races were $1,000-to-win but, if the winner of the first race started at the rear of the field for the second race and won, he would’ve collected and additional $500.
“I should have thought about it more,” Darne stated. “I mean, 35 laps to get it done. I really wish we would have got a late race caution but we didn’t. If I had a few more laps, we could’ve got to him.”
Kate Dallenbach backed up her fourth place finish in the first race with a third place finish in the second race.
“We came pretty close that second race,” Dallenbach explained. “We were just pretty loose in the center and a little bit tight off so that made it a little tough getting around. Yeah, I’m happy. We had a good night. In the first race, I don’t think I used the tires up too bad. At least it wasn’t 50 laps so I’m thankful for that. We did go pretty hard in the first race. The tires we got, the team couldn’t get them staggered just right so that didn’t help us out too well.”
Andrew Grady finished in fourth in the second race while Jonathan Findley, who finished one spot behind Grady in the first race, finished fifth. The two finishes allow Grady to extend his lead in the championship.
