SOUTH BOSTON, VA :: Danny Willis, Jr. scored his third career Limited Sportsman division championship at South Boston in a tiebreaker.  Willis and his main championship rival, JD Eversole, finished the season with a tie in points and an equal number of wins.  It was Willis having more runner-up finishes that secured the championship for Willis.

Willis had three wins on the season but it was not an easy fight.  Willis started off strong, but a couple of early season wrecks put him behind.  Once he rebounded, it ended up coming down to the final race of the season.

“It’s been a crazy season,” Willis said.  “It’s been up and down for us.  We actually won the first race out this year and got in about two or three wrecks after that.  We fell way back in the points.  I really didn’t think we’d have a shot at it this year.  We bounced back with a couple of wins in late July and closed the point gap back up.  Going in to the finale, we had a three point lead over JD Eversole.  He’s been digging hard all year.  They’re a good group of people.  They ran well and stayed out of trouble all year and he was right there in the hunt.  He wound up getting three wins this year too.”

The stage was set for an epic championship battle with twin Limited Sportsman feature races and the drivers at South Boston Speedway did not disappoint.  Eversole made the first move, scoring the win in the first of two races.

“It came down to the finale,” Willis said.  “He went on to win the first race.  We had a bad qualifying run, wound up seventh.  We struggled getting up in to the top three.  He wound up winning and that put him in the points lead going in to the second race.  It was a nail biter trying to figure out who was going to win the championship.”

Eversole had taken the points lead, but an invert put Willis on the front row.  Willis, who finished third in the first race, went on to take the early lead but a mid-race caution created fireworks on the track, shaking up the championship picture all the way to the end.

“It came down to the last race.  We had a last car the second race, got to start up on the front row and were able to get the lead on the start.  I feel like we had the car to beat at the start of that race.  We ran green 15-18 laps or something like that and didn’t want any caution and a caution came out.  Me and Tommy Peregoy got together on the restart and I guess I upset him.  On the next restart, he decided to take me out and took the top three in points out with us.  Luckily, it didn’t tear our car up or tear up Eversole or Trey Crews.  We were all able to come back and get a decent finish.”

Willis was able to rebound to finish in third while Eversole finished fifth – tying the championship and, with both drivers scoring three wins, forcing the track to look back at runner-up finishes.  Willis went on to win the championship but Willis said Eversole has nothing to hold his head down over after a thrilling championship duel.

“I picked up one position between me and Eversole and that tied us up in points.  Then we fell back to wins and we were tied for wins so they said we won the championship by one second place finish so that’s tight racing there.  I hope Eversole don’t hold his head down.  If I finished second, I’d probably want to hold my head down too but there’s no need because that was a hell of a fight all the way to the end.  That kid’s getting better every year and he’s got championships coming to him so he needs to hold his head up.”

Eversole finished second in points while Trey Crews finished third in points.  Of course, for Willis, he said it wasn’t possible without the determination of his crew.

“I can’t thank everyone who supported me all these years and all the guys on my team who worked their butts off.”

RACE22.com’s Mark Rogers, Jr. contributed to this report.