On Monday night, the NEO Racing News SK Shootout Series ran their 6th race of their season at the Lucas Oil Raceway as they reached the halfway point of the Summer Season.
In time trials it was Ty Majeski who took the fast lap which now moves him into sole possession of 1st in the SARA career poles list. Majeski would lead the top 8 cars into the 8-lap Qualifying Dash and took a commanding win by leading every lap. Those top 8 cars would be inverted for the feature with Cody Thompson being inverted to the front, while Majeski would actually be sent to the rear of the field after winning the previous two races in the division.
Cody Thompson led the field to the green flag but a couple of quick yellows slowed the pace of the race early. Once the field settled down however, it allowed Thompson to pull away into the lead during a 58 lap green flag run, but also allowed Ty Spearman to work his way through the field up to 2nd. A restart on lap 89 set the field up for a 11 lap run to the checkered flag, and while Thompson had things in control for most of the race, it was Spearman who made his move to the inside and took over the top spot with just 5 laps to go, and Spearman would hold on for the final 5 laps to pick up the win. The win for Spearman was his 3rd career SARA victory.
After dominating much of the race, Thompson would come up just short for a 2nd place finish. Michael German ran inside the top five all race long and was able to patiently work his way into a 3rd place finish to round out the podium. Ryan Borges would finish 4th after being caught up in a couple early incidents but would recover to run inside the top five over the last half of the race. Matt Rolfe would round out the top five in 5th after running 2nd earlier in the race and holding on late to take 5th.
Just outside the top five, Travis Warling also recovered from some early incidents to challenge for a top five spot in the final half of the race. Dale Owen ran inside the top five until a late spin, but he wouldn’t lose much ground and was able to recover for a 7th place finish. Ron Hagolin started deep in the field and would work his way into the top ten for most of the race and would finish in the 8th spot. Ken Belanger and Russell Berry each had fairly quiet nights but would run inside the top ten for a majority of the race and would round out the top ten in 9th and 10th respectively. Belanger gained the most positions on the night by gaining 8 spots from his 17th starting spot.
With his 5th top five in 6 races, and with the points leader missing the Week 6 race, Matt Rolfe now takes over the points lead and leads the standings by 16 points over 2nd place.