Cody Kelley Wins At New Smyrna In Dominating Fashion

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The RB Performance Super Late Model Series took to the track at New Smyrna Speedway 0n Thursday night for the second event of their Triple Crown, and the 10th race of their season.

Cody Kelley kicked off the night by picking up the pole, the 21st of his SARA career. The top ten cars from Time Trials were advanced into the Qualifying Dash, and an 8 car invert moved Kelley back while Adam Mattox was inverted to the front. Mattox jumped into the lead, but Davey Riendeau would get by in the early laps, and went on to pick up the Dash victory.

In the feature event, Mattox once again led the field to the green flag, and it was the same story as the Dash as Riendeau was able to quickly get by on lap three to take over the lead. As the early green flag run continued, it allowed Cody Kelley to pick his way through the top ten, and he was challenging for the lead by lap 10. A few laps later Kelley was able to get by Riendeau for the lead on lap 14. A handful of cautions flew between laps 30-60 which slowed the pace of the race down, but that was the only thing slowing Kelley down as a 78-lap green flag run followed which allowed Kelley to pull away by nearly twelve seconds before a final caution sealed the victory for him. Kelley would lead 137 laps and would come around to take the win, the 2nd of his season, and the 29th of his career.

Behind Kelley, Joe Schaffer would finish in the 2nd position after running in the top five all race long, but he would have to hold off Jason Williams who was hunting him down in the late laps, but Williams would have to settle for the third spot on the podium after starting back in 15th. David Krikorian would move up into the top five in the early laps, and remained there for the rest of the race, running as high as second before settling in over the final run to finish 4th. Matt Rolfe rounded out the top five after running inside the top three for the first half of the race before falling back to a 5th place finish.

Just outside the top five, Ian Layne would work his way up into a 6th place finish despite running near the back half of the field for the first portion of the race. David Knowles would come from deep in the field after having issues in qualifying, and picked his way up into a 7th place finish. Russell Berry would recover from an early race spin to work his way back up into the top ten, and ended up with an 8th place finish. John-Michael Shenette also came from deep in the field and quickly worked inside the top ten, but looked to have some handling issues as he had a mid race spin, and had smoke coming off his tires late in the race, but he was able to hang on and picked up a 9th place finish. Jerry Stone would run in and out of the top ten for most of the night before settling into the 10th position during the later green flag run.

With another top five finish, Matt Rolfe hangs onto his points lead and extends it out to 51 points heading into next week’s race at Oxford. Jason Williams is now the leader of the Triple Crown standings by one point, with his finishes of 4th and 3rd so far.