The Sportsman Street Stock Series visited Phoenix on Tuesday night for the fourth race of their Summer Season, with a 60-lap feature event on the 1-mile oval. Casey Kelley topped the speed charts in qualifying to pick up his 5th career pole.
Kelley led the 18 car field to the green flag, and led the event early on as the race got started off with a 48 lap green flag run. During the run, Kelley looked to have the race in control, with Tim Bills just behind him. On lap 24 however, Kelley slipped up on the exit of turn two, which allowed Bills to get the run on the outside and completed the pass for the lead as they went into turn three. From there, it was all Bills as he maintained the lead through the only caution of the night on lap 48, and held off the field on the final restart to pick up the victory. The win for Bills was his 2nd career SARA win.
David Krikorian was able to use the late race caution to move up to a 2nd place finish after the final restart, which moved Kelley back to a 3rd place finish on the podium. Joe Schaffer Jr ran inside the top three for a majority of the race and would finish in the 4th spot. An intense battle for most of the race was for the 5th spot, and it was Kevin J Myers that was able to hang on for the top five finish.
Ryan Borges and Darrell Hamlin were a part of the battle for the top five, but they would come up just outside of it with 6th and 7th place finishes respectively. Matt Rolfe and Richard Bruce also had a race-long battle between themselves, and Rolfe was able to grab the edge after the final restart for 8th, with Bruce in 9th. Russell Berry would round out the top ten after running outside of it until the late stages of the race.
With his 4th place finish, Joe Schaffer Jr maintains the points lead leaving Phoenix, and extends it out to 24 points over 2nd place.