On Monday night, the NEO Racing News SK Shootout Series visited Lanier for the 4th race of their Summer Season, with 21 cars coming out for the 125-lap feature event.
Cody Kelley entered the night with the points lead, and he started off the night by setting the fast lap in time trials. He would bring the top 8 cars into the Qualifying Dash, and would go on to lead every lap for the Dash win. The win however, meant that Kelley would be inverted back to 8th for the feature, while Austin Yarbrough was inverted to the front.
Yarbrough led the field to the green flag and led the opening 13 laps of the race, before James Linkiewicz made his move into the lead. But that lead was short live as Ty Majeski made his way to the top spot on lap 16 after starting in the 5th position. From there on out, it was all Majeski at the front of the field for the remainder of the race, leading the final 110 laps to pick up the win. The win for Majeski was his 2nd in as many races in the SK division, and was his 38th career SARA victory.
Behind Majeski, Ty Spearman ran inside the top five all race while moving up to 2nd in the early stages of the race, but didn’t have quite enough pace to contend for the win and would finish in the runner-up spot. After starting in 8th with the Qualifying Dash invert, Cody Kelley would have to work his towards the front of the field, and while it took a little while to get there, he would end up finishing in the 3rd position to round out the podium. Kevin J Myers ran inside the top five all night and would finish in the 4th spot, while Matt Rolfe had to work his way from a 19th place starting spot, gaining the most positions on the night to round out the top five.
Ryan Borges had fought his way into the top five throughout the race, and would battle hard to stay there after the last restart but would drop to a 6th place finish after hanging tough in the outside groove. Cameron Hobbs finished in the 7th spot after a solid race and running as high as 4th by lap 75. Ian Layne quietly managed his way up into an 8th place finish after starting back in 20th spot. Matt Eddy started 9th, but dropped to the back after an early incident and would have to recover from going a lap down to finish back up in the 9th spot. Patrick Hahe rounded out the top ten after he too would have to come back from going a lap down.
With another top five and a 3rd place finish, Cody Kelley leaves Lanier with a commanding points lead in the standings, over 2nd place by 54 points.