Despite
entering Saturday night third in Modified points, Kenny Tremont Jr. and his
team felt that they were missing something. For Saturday night, they
acquired a new Bicknell chassis as an experiment. So far, so good.
Paul Gilardi started from the pole and
led early. Tremont started in the fourth position and wasted no time
getting himself to the front. On lap 4, he passed Gilardi to take the
lead and immediately began running away.
Further back, Brett Hearn started his
charge from the 15th starting spot in a methodical fashion. By lap 11, he
was up to seventh. At that point, the yellow flew due to debris from
Keith Flach’s car.
Another man on the move was Ronnie
Johnson. Starting 12th, Johnson was right in front of Hearn at the first
yellow. He then left Hearn behind, taking advantage of a couple of
restarts to move up to second on lap 13.
Following a spin on the backstretch for
Mike King, the field was set for the run to the finish. Tremont opened up
a big gap over the rest of the field and pulled away to take his first win of
the year and his 131st Modified win at Lebanon Valley.
“It was very good tonight,” Tremont
said afterwards. “We’d just gotten in a bit of a rut. [The crew]
got together a couple of weeks ago and said that we needed to try something
different. It was all them. They did all the leg work to get the
car together and it worked out good.”
Johnson held on to finish second,
followed by Kolby Schroder. Kyle Sheldon finished fourth, while Hearn’s
charge stalled out at fifth.
In the Small Block Modifieds, Chad
Pierce started from the pole and ran hard early on. Behind him, the man
that was on the move was Brett Haas. Haas was fastest in warm-ups and
knew that he had to go as soon as the green came out.
On the first lap, Haas moved up from
his ninth starting spot to fifth. A couple of laps later, he was
third. On lap 5, Haas took second away from Olden Dwyer, then immediately
ran down Pierce. Two laps later, Haas had the lead and was driving away.
Why did Haas have to get to the front
so quick? He had to get away from the cavalry, led by Tremont. Starting
16th, Tremont quickly moved into the top 10, then started picking off drivers
one-by-one.
There were no cautions in the feature,
but two near misses. On lap 2, Timothy Davis went for a partial spin in
turn 2 and got hit by Frank Harper. Later on, Jason Herrington and Olden
Dwyer had contact on the frontstretch.
Tremont was able to get past Pierce for
second on lap 18, but Haas had already built up the better part of a full
straightaway on the field. Haas was able to maintain that gap to take his
first win since 2014.
"[The race] was pretty uneventful,
which is a good thing" Haas said in the pits afterward. "I took
the lead around lap [7] and I knew from that point that I had to
build the lead as quickly as we could. I guess Kenny [Tremont Jr.]
was in second, but we just had to stay consistent and here we are."
Tremont was second, followed by
Pierce. Herrington was fourth, while Dwyer was fifth.