Majeski Holds on for IRP Victory

Image

Majeski_SLMWin1

The high powered RB Performance Super Late Models Series took the track at the Lucas Oil Raceway last night for 125 laps in their week 11 event, as the season entered into the final two weeks. 25 cars would take time in practice and time trials with Ty Majeski setting the fast time in qualifying with a lap time of 22.342 seconds, but that would get erased when the field split up into heat races to determine the starting lineup for the feature event.

Heat #1 started off with Matt Rolfe leading the first few laps before Majeski was able to make the pass on the bottom groove to go on and take the heat win, earning Majeski the pole position on the grid. Heat #2 saw Cody Leland lead the first couple laps of his heat before Trey Jarrell was able to work past him for the heat win, earning him the 2nd starting spot. Heat #3 wouldn’t see any lead changes as Derek Robinson led every lap en route to his heat win, giving him the 3rd starting spot. With just 25 cars, there would be no need for an LCQ this week, and all cars would make the starting grid for the feature. When the feature rolled out, just 21 of those cars would take the green flag.

Majeski and Jarrell led the field to the green flag off of turn four, but a quick stack up in the back of the pack would bring out a quick caution as the field would have a little trouble settling in during the early laps. The restart would see the two leaders dive into turns 1 and 2 side-by-side but they would make contact out of turn two, Jarrell would make contact with the wall while Majeski had to save his car, but a caution at the back of the field would save both of them. Jarrell took the opportunity to head down pit road to assess his damage while Majeski rolled on in the lead. Majeski would hang onto the lead through lap 40 during the first few cautions of the race, but he would duck down pit road for tires giving up the lead to Mike Belanger for a lap, and then Stan Bragg took over the lead as he had just pitted 10 laps earlier.

Bragg would lead the field to green on lap 58 after a couple of quick yellows, as the field would finally get settled in a started a 40 lap green flag run.  But shortly after the restart, Bragg would give up the lead to guys on newer tires and fell back to 4th while Bill Martin took over the top spot on lap 60. Knowing that he had two fast cars right behind him in Majeski and Jarrell, Martin would look to set sail out front and run and hide if he could. He set some blistering laps with the clean air on his nose and slowly began to pull away while the two drivers behind him were battling it out. Bragg would hang onto the 4th spot over the course of the run with the slightly older tires, while Jacob Linkiewicz had moved up into the top 5 early in the run. Belanger would work his way past Anthony Celentano and James Linkiewicz for the 6th spot as the three drivers ran fairly close during much of the run. As the drivers neared lap 100, Majeski made his move to the inside of Jarrell for the second spot, but he would slide up, as Jarrell was coming down off of turn two and the drivers would meet, making contact and sending the 41 around to bring out the caution. Both cars would avoid any further contact, and the incident would actually benefit both drivers as Martin’s lead out front would disappear on the restart.

Majeski would lead the field off of pit road for the following restart, but a couple of quick cautions would set the field up with a green-white-checker finish to end the race. Majeski would restart on the outside groove with Martin to his inside as they took off for the green, Martin would spin his tires allowing Majeski to jump out into the lead with Jacob Linkiewicz following him up into the 2nd spot. But as they headed down into turn 1, Martin would drive his car to the inside lane and slid up into Linkiewicz, collecting Belanger behind them and sending Belanger around in front of the field, ultimately collecting a number of cars and bringing the yellow flag back out to end the race.

Majeski was able to hold off the field on the final restarts to take the victory, sweeping the Pro and Super Late Model races this week. With the win, Majeski has now won a feature event in all four divisions this season. Martin was able to hang onto a 2nd place finish after looking like the car to beat on the long run earlier in the race, while Jarrell was able to move back up into the 3rd spot. Jacob Linkiewicz held onto 4th after the late incident, while Matt Eddy was able to avoid the incident completely to end up with a top 5 finish. With Jacob Linkiewicz’s 4th place finish, he hangs onto a 98 point lead in the standings over his brother, James. But with one more drop week in the season finale coming into play, some objects in his mirror (Jarrell) may seem closer than they appear.

  1. Ty Majeski
  2. Bill Martin
  3. Trey Jarrell
  4. Jacob Linkiewicz
  5. Matt Eddy
  6. Anthony Celentano
  7. Dale Owen
  8. Ty Spearman
  9. Cody Leland
  10. James Linkiewicz
  11. Mike Belanger
  12. Stan Bragg
  13. Ken Belanger
  14. Brandon Wilkinson
  15. Derek Robinson
  16. Trent Brown
  17. Matt Rolfe
  18. Ray Farlow
  19. Kevin Myers
  20. Todd Sipe
  21. Robert Matthews

DNS: Justin Brooks, Mark Welch, Jason Miller, Brandon Osborne

Next week the entire league heads to New Hampshire Motor Speedway for the season finale as the division will look to crown a new champion.

For the full results and standings, click HERE.