FONDA, N.Y. — The seventh annual running of the Fonda Speedway’s Firecracker 50 looked like yet another big payday for five-time event winner Stewart Friesen Wednesday night until he blew a tire on lap 28 and came within inches of blasting the turn-two wall.
After that, arch-rivals Matt Sheppard and Mat Williamson, who were running a full straightaway behind the leader, traded the point until 10 laps to go, when Sheppard blew under the Short Track Super Series point leader and put a locking grip on the $10,000 winner’s share of the River Valley Builders North Region purse.
Williamson and Anthony Perrego trailed Sheppard, who also won the event a year ago, to the stripe.
“I passed Mat the same way I’d passed him before, getting underneath him in turn four,” offered the overjoyed winner. “If you can run on somebody’s bumper here, you are usually faster, you just need room to operate. Once I got under him and out in clean air, I managed to run away from him. But it didn’t hurt either one of us that Stewart had trouble.”
Polesitter Ronnie Johnson got the lead on the initial break but had to try to do it over again when Alex Payne clobbered the backstretch wall on the second lap. Unfortunately, Johnson had the third-starting Williamson alongside for the restart and the fleet Canadian had the lead when they hit the backstretch. Behind them, Friesen had advanced from fifth to third and by the next yellow four laps later had disposed of Johnson and was ready to attack Williamson.
The return to green saw Friesen dive low to turn one to take command and in five laps, he had a full turn lead on Williamson. They caught the back markers on lap 11 and Friesen chewed them up, driving through the lapped traffic like it wasn’t there to build a full straightaway lead on the big half-mile by lap 15.
Williamson in turn drove away from Perrego while Sheppard cruised in fifth behind Johnson until just before Friesen’s tire problem, when he finally put him away. Sheppard then took advantage of the ensuing restart to dispose of Perrego and after a couple of near misses, finally got around Williamson for the lead just before Demetrious Drellos slowed to draw another yellow with 30 laps in the books.
Williamson got the jump on the ensuing restart and led the next 10 laps until Johnson stalled in turn three for yet another caution. Friesen had been clawing his way back through the field and was back in the top 10 but it was obvious that either Williamson or Sheppard was going to win.
“Super Matt” then drove underneath Williamson to take command only to have another yellow for a stalled car and a red for Roger Henion’s flip slow his progress. But with order restored, Sheppard drove off to a solid lead and cruised to victory lane.
Alex Yankowski was fourth ahead of Tyler Dippel, Friesen, Chris Raabe, Marc Johnson, Jessica Friesen and Mike Maresca.
“I was surprised that Matt got back around me,” offered Williamson, who had hoped to back up his recent Super DIRT Series win at the nearby Albany-Saratoga Speedway with a Fonda score.
Perrego, on the other hand, thought he was “just OK! We needed to catch a couple of breaks and would have been much better off if we’d been third when Stewart broke. Then those late restarts hurt us as well.”
The night’s other highlight was the Bill Ag two-lap match races for the top six Fonda regulars, postponed from its original Saturday night date by rain. Jack Lehner won the first three rounds but was eliminated by Yankowski in the next round. The youngster then lost out to Rocky Warner in the $1,100 finale.
Perrego, Warner, Marc Johnson and Sheppard shared heat wins with Maresca and Raabe prevailing in the twin consolation rounds.
The finish:
Feature (50 Laps): 1. 9S-Matt Sheppard[6]; 2. 3W-Mat Williamson[3]; 3. 4P-Anthony Perrego[4]; 4. 84Y-Alex Yankowski[8]; 5. 1D-Tyler Dippel[7]; 6. 44-Stewart Friesen[5]; 7. 01-Chris Raabe[22]; 8. 9J-Marc Johnson[2]; 9. 1Z-Jessica Friesen[17]; 10. 7MM-Michael Maresca[21]; 11. 02-Jack Lehner[13]; 12. 35M-Mike Mahaney[16]; 13. 34-Dave Constantino[19]; 14. 4-Cody Clark[15]; 15. 21-Gary Edwards III[18]; 16. 19JR-Roger Henion Jr[27]; 17. 2RJ-Ronnie Johnson[1]; 18. 111-Demetrios Drellos[10]; 19. 42-Tucker O’Connor[24]; 20. 24P-Brian Pessolano[20]; 21. 879-Darryl Mitchell[25]; 22. 22W-Brandon Walters[23]; 23. 35B-Francois Bellemare[26]; 24. 28T-Michael Trautschold[14]; 25. 70A-Alex Payne[9]; 26. 97-Bobby Hackel IV[11]; 27. 1-Rocky Warner[12]