On Wednesday night, the MRolfeDesigns Pro Late Model Series took their turn at the Five Flags Speedway for their Triple Crown event. The 5th race of the regular season also served as the first race of the Triple Crown and 32 cars would attempt to qualify for the 150-lap feature event.
In time trials it was Joe Schaffer Jr. who set the fast lap to take the pole, and he would lead the top 8 cars into the Qualifying Dash. Schaffer had no trouble as he jumped out to the lead and led every lap of the 8 lap shootout to pick up the Dash win, but that would invert him back to 8th for the feature, while Ty Spearman would be inverted to the front.
Spearman brought the field to the green flag for the feature race and looked to have things in control early on as he held the top spot for the first 48 circuits. That was until James Linkiewicz worked his way through the front of the field as he grabbed the lead from Spearman just after a restart. A 30 lap run prior to a lap 88 caution resulted in a majority of the field coming down pit road at that time to take their only set of tires. This handed the lead to Ian Layne for a few laps, but Linkiewicz quickly took over the top spot once more, and never let it go from there. Linkiewicz led the final 55 laps during the long green flag run, held off Spearman, and went on to pick up the victory, which was his 3rd career SARA win.
Coming up just short was Spearman in the 2nd spot after he led early and posted a late charge at the lead. Schaffer ran inside the top five all night and would round out the podium in 3rd. Davey Riendeau also ran towards the front of the field all race and picked up his best career SARA finish to date in 4th, with David Krikorian just behind him in 5th after also running in the top five for most of the race.
Just outside the top five, Jacob Linkiewicz ran as high as 2nd but would end up with a 6th place finish. Windell Stratton took home a 7th place finish, with Ryan Borges behind him in 8th as the biggest mover of the night coming from a 21st place starting spot. Kevin J Myers recovered from a very early spin down into the infield and going down a lap to get back up to 9th, while Darek Gress had a solid night rounding out the top ten.
After his 3rd place finish, Joe Schaffer Jr. adds a little bit to his points lead and leaves Five Flags with a 32 point lead in the standings. James Linkiewicz leads the Triple Crown standings with 1 point after his win.