QUINCY, Mich. — Thursday night at Butler Motor Speedway wrote the next chapter of a summer-long battle between Trevor Neville and Mike McKinney.
Coming into the contest, the two Illinois racers held first and second place in the DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals points standings – a fitting scene for the two, who put on a hard battle in the closing laps that ended with McKinney passing Neville to secure his fifth Hell Tour victory of the season.
“We race each other every week whether it’s Summer Nationals or not,” McKinney said of his competition with Neville. “[Neville] has been really good this year, and it’s twice now leading has kind of bit him. I’ve been able to run him down from second and just do the opposite of what he does, but you’ve got to be good enough to be able to do that.”
From third on the starting grid, McKinney found himself three seconds behind Neville five laps into the main event. But a few cautions and lapped traffic allowed McKinney to reel in Neville, and by lap 19, he was right on Neville’s tail.
Going into turn three, McKinney rode the middle of the track while Neville stayed on the high side. Coming out of turn four, McKinney crept in front of Neville and beat him to the start/finish line by .035 seconds to take the lead.
However, McKinney was forced to restart one time after taking the lead. On the restart, Neville attempted a slider on McKinney out of turn two but McKinney held strong up high to maintain the lead, finishing over a second ahead of Neville when the checkered flag flew.
“That top of [turns] one and two was really thin and I just started running that a lot harder and was able to get a little bit of a better exit out of two,” McKinney said. “Was running a little bit lower than [Neville] was in [turns] three and four and just saw the gap get closer and closer and was running him down before we hit that lapped traffic, and obviously the lapped traffic helped.”
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 96M-Mike McKinney[3]; 2. 777-Trevor Neville[2]; 3. 24-Zeke McKenzie[1]; 4. 17N-Dillon Nusbaum[5]; 5. 7-Brad Deyoung[9]; 6. 5CS-Curt Spalding[7]; 7. 74M-Manix Furqueron[6]; 8. 117-Kevin Reeve[4]; 9. 14-Dalton Lane[10]; 10. 25-Josh Lolmaugh[12]; 11. 54-Zachary Hawk[11]; 12. 65-Todd Sherman[15]; 13. 82-Brennan Sherman[8]; 14. 14T-Mario Toniolo[16]; 15. 8C-Corey Bevard[13]; 16. 9-Garrett Rons[18]; 17. 5D-David VanGuilder[17]; 18. 26-Anthony Carter[19]; 19. 7S-Rick Swartout[20]; 20. 64M-Tim McCafferty[21]; 21. 96S-Terry Sroufe[22]; 22. 4M-Dustin Moore[14]