Spearman Pulls Away For 4th Win Of Season At Stafford

Image

The Callaway Investments Sportsman Street Stock Series visited the Stafford Motor Speedway on Tuesday Night for a 75 lap feature event.

To start off the night, Matt Rolfe claimed his 47th career pole, with a lap of 21.412 seconds in Time Trials. He beat out Ty Spearman by 0.045 seconds who qualified 2nd. With a ten-car invert for the race and the Qualifying Dash, this put Jim Caudill Jr. at the head of the field, and he held off the pack in the Dash for the win to score some extra bonus points.

SS_Week7

When the green flag on the feature flew, Caudill Jr. led the opening lap, but was passed by 2nd place starter Mike Belanger on lap 2 for the race lead. Belanger would lead for just a few laps before Tommy Burns then moved from his 5th place starting spot to the race lead on lap 9. Burns quickly put about a second lead on the field before the race’s first caution at lap 13. The race restarted a few laps later and Burns was able to pull away from Belanger and Michael German on the restart.

Burns continued to lead through the early portions of the race, but Ty Spearman, who started 9th with the invert, had moved his way into the 2nd spot by lap 22, and started to work into Burns’ 1-second lead. It took Spearman 20+ laps to catch and then pass Burns for the race lead, but he did so on lap 45. Spearman got under Burns, only for Burns to turn around with a crossover to retake the lead, but Spearman fought back once more and took over the top spot. While this was happening, they had put about 2 seconds on third place Parker Traves. Just shortly after Spearman took the lead, the race’s second and final caution flew on lap 47.

Spearman led the field back to the green from the outside, with Burns, Traves, German and Belanger in the top five. While Spearman had a little challenge from Burns in the first couple laps after the restart, he slowly kept putting around a tenth a lap on Burns and company behind him. There was plenty of contact and hard racing behind the leader in the closing laps, but it was all about Ty Spearman on Tuesday as he cruised to a 1.7 second victory over Tommy Burns at Stafford. This was his 4th Street Stock victory of the season, and his 12th career SARA victory.

Behind Ty Spearman, it was Tommy Burns who led a race high 36 laps and wound up bringing it home in 2nd after running up front all night. Parker Traves seemed to be in third place for the majority of the race and wound up finishing there as well, as he just didn’t have enough to catch the top two. Tom Wetmore failed to put a lap down in qualifying and moved his way forward all night to finish 4th. Hunter Combs, who was quickest in pre-qualifying practice had a bad lap in Time Trials and had to start mid-pack in the feature, but rebounded to a 5th place finish.

Michael German ran as high as third at points in the race, but got shuffled out of the top five very late to finish 6th. Matt Rolfe, after laying down a hot lap in qualifying, got shuffled back early and benefitted from the race’s final caution to get caught back up and to be in position to fight back to a 7th place finish. Travis Warling started 15th on the night, and hovered around the back half of the top ten for the second half of the race and finished 8th. Marc Gammack was the first driver to miss the Dash starting 11th, and rode around the top ten for most of the event before finishing 9th. Mike Belanger, after leading 7 laps early was in the top five for the first half of the race, before some late incidents relegated him to a 10th place finish.

After a 2nd place run, Tommy Burns passed Hunter Combs for the Street Stocks points lead as he now holds a slim 5-point advantage. Next week the Street Stocks finish out the New England swing with a 75-lap race under the lights at Thompson, a track that has not been visited since March of 2015.

Street Stock Division Page
Penalty Box