Ty Spearman Coasts To Opening Triple Crown Victory

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This past Thursday night, the RB Performance Super Late Model Series ran the first leg of their Triple Crown with a 150 lap event at the Irwindale Speedway. The event would mark the 6th event of the Super Late Model Season, and would wrap up a full week of racing at Irwindale, as well as wrapping up the first half of the Fall Season.

The night got kicked off with Time Trials and it was Windell Stratton that put his car on the pole with a lap of 17.613 seconds. An invert of 8 however, would drop Stratton back, while Jason Williams was inverted to the front of the field for the Qualifying Dash. Williams was able to get the jump in the Dash to take the early lead, and was able to hang on while the rest of the field battled behind him, and he would take the Dash win.

Williams would once again lead the field to the green flag in the feature event, and jumped out to the early lead. Williams would lead the opening 18 laps of the race, but Matt Rolfe had closed the gap and made his move into the top spot by lap 19. Bur right behind Rolfe was Bill Martin and Ty Spearman as they too were charging to the front. Martin ducked to the inside of Rolfe and they would battle side-by-side for the lead for a handful of laps before Martin took over the top spot. Just 10 laps later though, Spearman would do the same thing, and took his turn out front by taking the lead on lap 43.

While the Triple Crown events allow drivers to take an extra set of tires during the race, by the time Spearman took over the lead, the field had already gone green flag up to that point, and with the field spread out they wouldn’t see a single caution all race long. Some drivers would be forced to pit road under green flag conditions and took tires, but lost a lot of time as the long green flag run allowed Spearman to sail away out front. With the laps winding down, Stratton started closing the gap and got it down to about 1 second, but it was all Spearman out front as he would lead 108 laps in a completely green flag race to take the win. The win for Spearman was his 2nd of the season, and the 6th of his SARA career.

Behind Spearman, Stratton would finish in the 2nd spot, closing that gap to the leader by about 2 seconds over the final 35 laps of the race, but would run out of time and had to settle for the runner-up spot. Rolfe and Williams would both stick around in the top five after each leading laps in the early portion of the race, before finishing in 3rd and 4th respectively. Hunter Combs started his night in the 2nd spot, dropped all the way back to the 10th position early in the race before he climbed back up to finish 5th.

Just outside the top five was Ryan Borges who was one of the few driver that pit under green to get tires, and was able to make up enough ground on his fresh rubber to charge back up to a 6th place finish. David Krikorian ended up finishing in 7th after he started at the back of the field, climbed all the way to the 3rd position before his tires gave up and dropped him back. Cameron Hobbs started just outside the top ten and dropped back in the early laps, before moving up throughout the race and ended up 8th. Russell Berry and Ian Layne each attempted to make runs at Hobbs in the late laps after they each, but found themselves battling each other before they ended up finishing in 9th and 10th respectively.

With the victory, Ty Spearman extends his lead slightly out to just 11 points in the standings, and also puts himself at the top of the Triple Crown standings after one event, and will lead the series into Iowa next week for the 7th race of the season.