The Callaway Investments Sportsman Street Stock Series visited the Martinvsille Speedway this past Tuesday night for a 75-lap feature. 25 drivers would try their hand at trying to claim a victory before a break from the championship battle with the Summer Heat events upcoming.
The 25-car field would line up for Time Trials as it was Ty Majeski picking up the pole with a hot lap in the afternoon round of qualifying. However for the Dash and the Race, a 9-car invert would see Tim Bills be put to the front of the field. In the Dash, it was Tim Bills who was able to hold off the 10-car Dash field for the extra bonus points.
Tim Bills would lead the field to the green through the race’s first 20 lap green flag run with a hard charging Cody Kelley and Ty Majeski making up the top three at the race’s first yellow flag. Behind them, Austin Yarbrough and Derek Kraus would round up the top five at this point.
Another green flag run would ensue with Bills continuing to hold off Majeski and Kelley with the two behind the race leader swapping the 2nd position a couple of times behind Bills out front. The top three would put about a second on 4th place Dale Owen at this point as the top three cars remained in a fierce battle up front. At the race’s halfway point, Tim Bills would finally surrender the race lead to Cody Kelley at the race’s halfway point on lap 37.
Kelley’s time at the front would be shortlived as Majeski found his way around for the top spot on lap 41. However, the top two cars would continue to battle hard and Kelley would try to take the lead back on lap 43, but ending up making contact with Majeski and sent the 91 car around for the race lead. A caution would fly and Kelley, who now inherited the lead back, claimed his caution and was given an end of line penalty.
The accident between the top two would hand the lead back to Tim Bills at lap 48. Bills would lead the field back to green with Kelley and Majeski restarting at the rear of the field which brought some new faces towards the front in James Linkiewicz, Dale Owen, Derek Kraus, James Wenzel and Austin Yarbrough making up the top 6 cars in the field now.
Bills would continue to lead through lap 66 until contact was made between him and James Linkiewicz, and sent Bills spinning into turn 3, which gave Linkiewicz the race lead until race officials determined he was at fault of the incident and was moved to the end of the running order at the end of the race.
This set up the field for one last restart with Austin Yarbrough being the highest scored car in the field. Derek Kraus would find his way around Yarbrough on the ensuing restart with James Wenzel following through before the race finished under caution. After many issues for the race leaders throughout the race and after official review, Kraus was scored as the race winner for his first career SARA victory.
Behind Kraus, James Wenzel started in the 15th position but moved forward all race long to wind up in the runner-up position. Dale Owen started back in the tenth position but ran near the top five for most of the race before finishing in the 3rd spot. Austin Yarbrough, who had essentially inherited the race lead at the end was stuck on the outside for the final restart and slipped back to a 4th place finish. Derek Gress ran near the back half of the top 10 for the majority of the race before finding his way to a 5th place run at the end.
Clay Snider started in the 18th position before climbing into the top 10 in the second half of the race, and charged to a 6th place run. Ty Majeski and Cody Kelley both spent time at the front and after their mid-race incident, they were glued together much like they were at the front of the field as they recovered to 7th and 8th place finishes. Ian Layne and Tyler Howell both failed to crack the top 10 until the final restart before gaining a few spots late to finish 9th and 10th respectively.
With the wild night for the front runners in the race and also the championship, and drop races being factored in during the off-week, Ty Spearman leads the standings heading into the rescheduled race at Richmond with a 37 point lead.