BLOOMINGDALE, TN :: Lee Tissot dominated Friday night’s Late Model feature at Kingsport Speedway en route to his first win of the season.  Tissot passed Chad Finchum, who started the race second after an invert, early in the race and led most of the laps in the race.

“It was a pretty easy race at the beginning,” Tissot said.  “The car was handling great.  Then towards the end, Daniel (Pope) came up through there and he knows how to work his tires.  I had a little advantage on him but the crate motors are hard on brakes.  We finally got us one.  It should’ve been two in a row but we’ll try again next week.”

Zeke Shell finished second after running up in the top five much of the race.  He raced hard with Daniel Pope in the closing laps and edged Pope by inches at the line for the runner-up position.

“I have not raced against somebody with more talent in my life,” Shell said about Pope.  “I’ve never had to fight so hard for a position.  I’m going to get his autograph after the race.”

“This thing was on a rail,” Pope said about his third place finish.  “We broke a rear end in qualifying and had to start dead last.  Race went green for 45-50 laps.  You just can’t make ground up like that.  I got up to fifth and the caution came out.  Next thing I knew, I was restarting in second.  I can’t be proud enough.  To start last and finish third and I gained points on (Finchum).”

Finchum started on the front row and led the race early.  However, a late race incident with Blake Jones dropped him towards the rear of the field.  He was able to recover to finish in fourth.

“We had a really strong car,” Finchum said.  “We took the lead early on and it started off really well.  Then we had an early caution.  I guess our water temperatures weren’t right and Tissot got by us…   We started working back towards the front and made our way up to second and then, going in to turn three, they made it three wide on the inside of us and came across our hood.  We had to change a tire.  We got back out, came back with 10 laps to go and wound up fourth.”

Kres Van Dyke finished in fifth while Paul Nogradi recovered from an early spin to finish sixth with Robbie Ferguson, Austin Peters, Taylor Coffman and Mike Potter rounding out the top ten.

Daniel Pope continues to hold on to the points lead at Kingsport Speedway.  The next race at Kingsport will be on June 7th.