FAIRBURY, Ill. — On a normal Saturday night at Fairbury Speedway, the local DIRTcar UMP Modified regulars are racing for $1,500 and points in the FALS Cup track championship.
But the FALS Super Nationals boasts a $10,000 top prize, and it had the car count and racing quality to match.
A grand total of 80 UMP Modifieds showed up to FALS Saturday night, and all were zeroed-in to beat one man – Nick Hoffman.
Unfortunately for all 79 other drivers, Hoffman brought his A-game again, taking advantage of an incident with the early race leaders and outrunning his opponents in the final laps as he cruised to the $10,000 top prize and second-consecutive Summit Racing Equipment American Modified Series Feature win in two nights.
Hoffman started third and bided his time in the opening circuits of the 50-lap feature behind leaders Bob Pohlman, Dawson Cook and Curt Spalding. Cook made the pass for the lead on lap five and appeared to be a worthy competitor for the win before a very costly mistake bit him getting into turn one on lap 12.
Cook looped it heading into turn one on the top side and met Mike Harrison, who was barreling through at full-speed and slammed into him, causing serious damage to both rides.
This handed the lead over to none other than The Thrill from Mooresville with 39 laps left. All of which he led, but not without a strong challenge from behind by Allen Weisser.
Weisser sat comfortably in the runner-up spot for the back half of the race before challenging Hoffman in lapped traffic with three laps to go.
“[Weisser] showed me a nose there coming to the white and I was able to shut him down into Turn 1 and make the next lap,” Hoffman said.
The last-laps battle for 10-grand was also done while deep in lapped traffic, making it all that much more exciting. It held Hoffman up a bit and allowed Weisser to close, but Hoffman was able to hold him off for the win unscathed.
“[Mark] Lamont at the end – I wasn’t sure which direction he was gonna go. He was kinda arching the corners pretty hard, so I wasn’t really sure. That allowed Allen [Weisser] to get all the way to me. Otherwise, I felt I had a big enough lead where I could have rolled right around there,” Hoffman said of the battle with Weisser.
The finish:
Feature (50 Laps) 1. 7H-Nick Hoffman[3]; 2. 25W-Allen Weisser[8]; 3. 25-Tyler Nicely[6]; 4. 35S-David Stremme[16]; 5. 96M-Mike McKinney[25]; 6. 21-Derek Losh[14]; 7. 53-Bobby Stremme[19]; 8. 45K-Kyle Hammer[20]; 9. 10J-Bradley Jameson[22]; 10. 4-Victor Lee[10]; 11. 3L-Jeff Leka[13]; 12. 28-Rodney Standerfer[24]; 13. 21D-Danny Schwartz[9]; 14. 32P-Bobby Pierce[5]; 15. 3W-Dylan Woodling[23]; 16. 1WP-Bob Pohlman[1]; 17. 99W-Chris Arnold[7]; 18. 7-Mark Lamont[15]; 19. (DNF) 5CS- Curt Spalding[4]; 20. (DNF) 1S-Brian Shaw[18]; 21. (DNF) 59R-Jacob Rexing[26]; 22. (DNF) 64-Dawson Cook[2]; 23. (DNF) 24H-Mike Harrison[12]; 24. (DNF) K19-Will Krup[17]; 25. (DNF) 20M-Josh Morton[21]; 26. (DNF) 21A-Nick Allen[11]