Midlothian, VA – Thomas Stinson looked to be in his element last Friday night as he took his 7th modified victory at Southside Speedway this year in the Ballos Precision Machine 50. Stinson held off a returning John Thorpe, fellow Southside regular Mike Rudy, and points leader A.J. Winstead in a race which had everything a race fan could possibly want.
Action began quick at the Southern Virginia bullring when on lap one a multi-car incident collected the cars of Tim Maxey, Chris Hoylman, and points leader AJ Winstead driving the Suntrust Mortgage/ Commonwealth Enviormental Associates car in between turns 3 and 4. The caution came out and a full field restart was ordered since the field was unable to make a complete lap.
Once the cars were lined up for the restart, trouble started again, this time involving the #10 car of David Winslow. Appearing to have cut a tire on the restart, the #10 car’s front right wheel locked up and the car plowed into the turn 1 wall, bouncing off of it and bringing out another caution. Winslow would replace the tire and run a few more laps but would eventually park the car for the rest of the night.
Green flag waved and Mike Rudy would lead the field by several car lengths in his yellow #8 car, being chased by a charging blue #63 mod of Thorpe and the red #4 of Stinson quickly en tail. After several laps of green flag racing, Rudy, Thorpe, and Stinson managed to break away from the rest of the pack with all three cars running single file. As the top three began to start lapping the teams in the back of the field, the 2nd place car of Thorpe made contact with the lapped #27 car of Andy Kemp sending Thorpe way loose, allowing Stinson to dive and take away 2nd from Thorpe. Not taking it loosely, as well as suffering from the toe being knocked out, Thorpe saved the car and continued chasing after Rudy and Stinson.
Meanwhile Stinson was able to catch Mike Rudy’s car and managed to make a clean pass for the lead coming off turn 2 and began pulling away. That margin would soon evaporate as an incident involving TJ Guthrie and Aubrey Thurston occurred in turn 2 which left Guthrie with a bent up rear end and stopped sideways in the corner. Both cars were able to pull away and continue.
On the restart, Stinson and Rudy were able to pull away from the 3rd place car of Thorpe when the lapped car of David Wheeler got in between him and Rudy. After a few laps, Thorpe managed to pass Wheeler and would make up several car lengths to catch and pass Mike Rudy for 2nd place.
As the top three leaders were contending, a little further in the back of the pack, the action was just as intense. Emotions rose to critical mass when after the #38 car of Michael Johnson got into the back of the #11 car of Irvin Bell coming into turn-2. After several bumps by the #38, the #11 car was sent spinning to the apron of the track. Not taking this lightly, Bell waited for the #38 to come back around where he then proceeded to butt the front of his machine up to Johnson’s machine and then proceeded with a burnout which completely engulfed both cars into thick white smoke.
The fans went ecstatic and received their money’s worth; Irvin received a black flag for actions detrimental with racing and was parked for the rest of the night. Michael Johnson was also black flagged and sent to the end of the longest line for the restart.
Penalties for both drivers are expected and will be handed down at a later time when the RTM Officials come to a collective agreement on proper disciplinary actions. Those penalties will be posted officially on the RTM website when the decision comes down.
After the smoke cleared (literally) and the 1va car of Lin O’Neal was towed off the track for an unrelated reason while the race was stopped, the green flag came out with 5 laps to go. Stinson managed to get a good restart and was able to keep the #63, #8, and #99 in his rearview mirror and take the checkers.
The tour returns to action next weekend at Orange County Speedway for their 5th installment of the Orange County Speedway Track Championship By Racing Electronics and Stock Car Products.
OTHER NOTES:
- Business picked up early in the day when in practice when Robert Conner ended up driving his car up the turn-2 wall and coming to rest right in front of a phone pole. Conner was ok in the incident and was able to recover in time for the race.
Not to be outdone, last race winner, Dean Slappey also got vertical at Southside as he took the wildest ride of the night when in the same practice session, he got his car riding sideways on the backstretch wall, then sliding across it, and then spinning off into turn 3. The crash resulted in Slappey breaking his rear end housing and was unable to compete in the night’s race. Slappey was ok and shrugged it off.
OFFICIAL RESULTS:
1. #4 Thomas Stinson
2. #63 John Thorpe
3. #8 Mike Rudy
4. #99 AJ Winstead
5. #2 Doug Paasch
6. #72 Robert Conner
7. #50 Ryan Boggs
8. #36 Chris Johnson
9. #38 Michael Johnson
10. #27x David Wheeler
11. #42 Chris Hoylman
12. #46 T.J. Guthrie
13. #21 Ryan Wilbourne
14. #27 Andy Kemp
15. #23 Stacy Wilbourne
16. #11 Irvin Bell
17. #1va Lin O’Neal
18. #21t Aubrey Thurston
19. #43 Warren Lipford Jr.
20. #19 Kyle Wood
21. #10 David Winslow
22. #12 Tim Maxey
23. #04 Larry Penny
DNS #91 Dean Slappey
