The Callaway Investments Sportsman Street Stock Series made the league’s first trip to the Southern National Motorsports Park on Tuesday night. A 100-lap feature event was on tap for the division’s fourth race of the season, and the second and final event of their Tar Heel Swing.
Ty Spearman started the night off by picking up his second straight pole with a lap of 16.050 seconds, bringing his total up to 9 career SARA poles. The top 10 cars advanced into the Qualifying Dash, and a full 10-car invert sent Spearman back in the pack while Travis Warling was inverted to the front. In the Dash, Warling pulled away early while the pack battled behind him, and he went on to pick up the Dash victory.
Warling led the field to the green flag in the feature event and again got the advantage out in the lead. Warling was only able to pull ahead of Kenny Smith by a couple car lengths in the early portion of the race as the field set out on a 45 lap green flag run to start things off, but the long run allowed Smith to track down the leader. By lap 20, Smith was putting pressure on for the lead and got under Warling to take the lead on lap 21. Smith controlled things out front for most of the race up until a lap 84 restart. Smith was able to gain the advantage into turn one after the restart, but coming out of turn two he and Cody Thompson made contact and both cars ended up spinning out, handing the lead over to Tom Wetmore.
With Wetmore inheriting the lead, he had to hold off a couple charges in the late laps as a couple restarts brought the field back up to his rear bumper. The final restart came with just 5 laps to go, and Wetmore nearly slipped up enough to give Tommy Burns and Dale Owen a shot at the win, but Wetmore settled in and pulled away by a couple car lengths in the closing laps, and came around to take the checkered flag. Wetmore’s win was his first of the Street Stock Season, and the 5th of his SARA career.
Finishing behind Wetmore in 2nd was Dale Owen who dropped into the back half of the top ten before climbing his way back up to the front. Tommy Burns had a strong run as he worked his way up onto the podium and battled for the win late in the race before finishing 3rd. Hunter Combs recovered from a mid race spin and worked his way back up into a 4th place finish. Matt Rolfe rounded out the top five after falling out of the top ten during the middle stages of the race before gaining spots at the end to take 5th.
Ty Spearman just missed out on a top five finish after running inside of it during the late stages of the race but ended up finishing in the 6th position. Kevin J Myers ran inside the back half of the top ten all race long and ended up taking a 7th place finish. Camaron Hamilton, Tyler Howell, and Travis Warling each got caught up in a caution around the halfway point of the race but were able to work their way back up into 8th-10th place finishes respectively.
With another solid finish for Hunter Combs, he continues to lead the points standings after four events, but the lead shrunk down to just 6 points heading into next week’s off-week. Tommy Burns put up the best overall finish in the two Tar Heel Swing races and earned some extra bonus points towards his championship standings. The division’s next race will be in two weeks with double features at Oxford.