On Monday night, the NEO Racing News SK Shootout Series visited the “Home of the SK Modifieds”, Stafford Motor Speedway for their 10th race of the season for a 100-lap feature event
Ty Majeski picked right back up where he’s been running lately to grab the pole for the event, his 43rd career pole. He would lead the top 8 cars into the Qualifying Dash, but he had no issues as he went on to pick up the Dash win. After, an invert of 5 would bring Cody Thompson up to the front of the field for the feature, while Majeski would have been inverted back to 5th, but had to start at the back of the field after winning the two previous races in the division.
Thompson got the jump into the lead out front at the drop of the green flag, but it took just a few laps for Kevin J Myers to make his way by. Myers looked to have the car to bear early on in the race, but was also attempting to hold off Ty Spearman who was hot on his heels. The race started off with a 45 lap green flag run, but when the caution flew it allowed the field to catch back up, which also allowed Majeski to make up some ground as he had moved up to 5th during the run. As the race carried on, eventually Majeski worked his way up to 2nd, and was chasing down Myers for the lead. Myers would let Majeski peek to his inside a couple of times, but was able to keep up his momentum to hold him off, until Myers came out of turn two a little high, bouncing his car off the wall and giving Majeski the run he needed. Majeski would sneak by, and would lead the final 12 laps of the race to pick up his 6th SK win of the season, and his 42nd career SARA victory.
Myers would fall back to 2nd and would finish in that spot after leading 83 laps of the race. While Spearman contended early for the lead, he would end up finishing on the podium in 3rd. Ryan Borges had a quiet night, and after getting involved in an early spin, he was able to work his way back up to a 4th place finish. Dale Owen worked his way up around the top five and ran there all race before ending up with a 5th place finish to round out the top five.
Just outside the top five, Michael German picked up a 6th place finish after running at the back end of the top ten for most of the race. Anthony Celentano started back in the 15th position and worked his way up into the top ten around the halfway point of the race and stayed up there to finish 7th. Russell Berry, Patrick Hahe, and Michael Baxter each started outside from 18th or worse at the start of the race and each finished inside the top ten, finishing 8th, 9th, and 10th respectively.
Cody Kelley ended up missing the race, but with the aid of drop races he hangs onto the points lead and leads the standings by 62 points heading into next week’s race at Bristol.