Kevin J Myers Finds The Grip En Route To Iowa Win

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On Wednesday night, the MRolfeDesigns Pro Late Model Series visited the Iowa Speedway for their 5th event of the season after taking the week off for the Fall Brawl. An 85 lap feature event would be on hand for the drivers at an always exciting track in Iowa.

Windell Stratton kicked off the night by picking up the fast lap with a time of 23.318 seconds, over a tenth faster than 2nd place. The fast lap for Stratton earned him his 2nd career SARA pole. The top ten cars from Time Trials would be sent to the Qualifying Dash, where an 8 car invert would bring Clay Snider to the front of the field. It was Marc Gammack however that took the lead early and went on to pick up the Dash win and some extra bonus points.

Snider once again brought the field to the green flag for the feature event, and this time was able to hang onto the lead for a bit longer, until Gammack took the lead from him on lap 11. From there, Gammack had a battle on his hands as Bill Martin was putting the pressure on and the two drivers would run side-by-side for a few laps, swapping the lead, until Martin took the lead for good on lap 21. As the green flag run continued, it looked as Martin would be on his way to victory before the first caution of the race slowed the pace down, and brought the field back to Martin’s rear bumper. After the restart, it took just a couple laps for Martin to lose his lead as Kevin J Myers took over the top spot, and from there it wasn’t a lead that Myers would let go of. One final restart set the field up for a dash to the finish, and Myers pulled ahead and would coast to the victory. The win for Myers was his 2nd of the PLM season, and his 5th career SARA victory.

While Myers was strong out front, much of the field battled loose conditions as the track got slick. Behind the winner, it was an impressive move by Gammack, splitting Ty Majeski and Spearman in the middle of the three-wide battle, as Gammack would come through to take 2nd. Majeski would just barely hang on to round out the podium in 3rd ahead of a dog fight inside the top five, after he would start at the back of the field after missing qualifying. Corey Wharton beat out Spearman for 4th, after Wharton started outside the top ten and worked his way up towards the front of the field. Spearman just missed out on finishing 4th, but would come across the line in 5th after not being able to break into the top five until late in the race.

Just outside the top five, Dale Owen spent much of his time battling for the 10th spot, before one of the late race incidents moved him up and he closed out the race finishing 6th. After leading the opening 10 laps, Snider dropped deep in the field with a loose race car, before climbing his way back up to a 7th place finish late. Matt Rolfe also dropped back throughout the race towards the back of the field before moving up late into 8th. Jason Williams and David Williamson, both started at the back of the pack, but made steady progress during the race to move up into 9th and 10th place finishes respectively.

While Bill Martin was involved in one of the late race wrecks and ended up finishing 16th, he takes over the points lead as previous leader Davey Riendeau was involved in the same wreck and ended up 18th. Martin now leads the standings by just 1 single point, and will lead the field into next week’s double header at the Irwindale Speedway.