On Tuesday night, the Sportsman Street Stock Series took to the track on the half-mile paperclip of Martinsville for the 11th race of their season.
Much like he’s done all season long, Casey Kelley grabbed the pole for the 75-lap event and led the field to the green flag. Just one caution mid-race slowed down the pace of the field, but in each green flag, no one could catch up to Kelley as he extended his lead each run. When the checkered flag flew, Kelley stretched his lead out to over two seconds, and crossed the line to pick up his 5th Street Stock win of the season, and his 6th of his SARA career.
Behind Kelley, Joe Schaffer Jr. fought hard all race long for the 2nd spot and would move ahead of Tim Bills to finish in 2nd, while Bills would end up finishing 3rd on the podium. Kevin J Myers worked his way up into the top five just before halfway, and stayed up there to grab a 4th place finish. Windell Stratton ran his first SS race of the season and hung around just outside the top five for most of the race before moving into 5th during the late stages of the race.
Just outside the top five, Matt Rolfe steadily climbed from his 11th starting spot to grab 6th, with Darrell Hamlin not too far behind in 7th after hanging around the top five all race. James Linkiewicz ran inside the top five, but fell back to an 8th place finish with an ill-handling car late in the race. Todd Sipe ran in the top ten all night and grabbed a 9th place finish, while Brian Tedeschi took 10th after recovering from a spin earlier in the event.
With the victory, Casey Kelley extended his points lead to 25 points as the division leaves Martinsville. Next week the Sportsman Street Stocks will visit South Boston for the season finale, where Kelley will need an 11th place finish or better to clinch his first title.