MALTA, N.Y. — The 76-lap Don Davies Memorial held in honor of the late Area Auto Racing News columnist, drew a huge crowd and a stellar field of 46 DIRTcar modifieds to the Albany-Saratoga Speedway Tuesday night.
When the dust settled, it was a familiar face, “Money Mat” Williamson, in victory lane.
The fleet Canadian led much of the 46-lap opening segment of the big block event but lost the lead to Pennsylvania’s Alex Yankowski with nine to go, giving the youngster the $2,000 bonus for leading at the break. Yankowski then drew a pill to determine whether four, six or eight cars would be inverted for the start of the remaining 30 laps and pulled a six.
“I didn’t like the format before we started, as it’s really hard to pass here and I figured no matter what was drawn, I’d get hurt,” summed up Williamson, who started on the front row alongside Matt Sheppard. “But it turned out that it won us the race. I had a tire that sealed over and dropped to third, but that gave me a chance to hit the cushion to clear it off. When we ended up fourth on the invert, the car was really good and we were ready to go.”
“The bonus was nice but the $7,600 for winning would have been a lot better,” tipped Yankowski, who ended up trailing Williamson and Stewart Friesen to the checkers. “By the end, track conditions weren’t that good and lapped traffic was tough. The invert hurt us, as it was hard to catch those guys from sixth.”
Williamson led the early laps with Sheppard nipping at his heels but cautions every few laps kept them out of traffic while also keeping the field closed up.
This helped Yankowski, who advanced from fifth to battle third running Ronnie Johnson through lap 18, when he finally got the position away from the third-generation racer.
Behind that duel, Friesen was steadily moving forward from eighth and he too shot down Johnson in the early 20s as Yankowski went to work on Sheppard for second.
He finally prevailed on lap 29 and when Williamson caught the tail of the field and began struggling with lapped cars on lap 34, Yankowski turned up the wick and got the lead with a slick low side move in traffic with nine to go in the opening segment.
The invert put Ronnie Johnson on the pole for the restart with Tim Sears Jr alongside and Friesen and Williamson in row two. Sears got the lead on the break with Williamson following him around the high side of Friesen and Johnson.
Four laps in Williamson was working the outside of Sears, then the next time around he switched lanes and dove underneath the leader as Sheppard and Yankowski waged war behind him.
Williamson had a full turn lead over Sears and Friesen when the latter caught fire in the early 60s, seizing second on lap 62 and then steadily closing on Williamson over the last dozen laps.
The NASCAR Truck Seres star got it down to three car lengths with two to go but that was as close as he got.
“I never heard him,” tipped Williamson, with Friesen adding, “We were plugging away around the bottom and making good progress but at the end, the lapped cars were all stuck on the bottom so we had to move to the middle and Mat was better there. The format was interesting but in our case, maybe not exactly what we wanted.”
Sheppard was fourth at the pay window, ahead of Sears, Johnson, Jimmy Phelps, Anthony Perrego, Matt DeLorenzo and Alex Payne.
In another unusual aspect of the split format, DIRTcar points were assigned by virtue of the finish in the first segment, which saw a finishing order of Yankowski, Sheppard, Williamson, Friesen, Sears, Johnson, Phelps and DeLorenzo.
Beau Ballard notched a $1,000 win in the Pro Stock feature, with Devon Camenga and rim riding Luke Horning, who came from deep in the field, trailing.
Tim Hartman Jr. claimed yet another Sportsman win over Craig Wholey and Taylor Wasson.
The finish:
Feature (76 Laps): 1. 88-Mat Williamson[2]; 2. 44-Stewart Friesen[8]; 3. 84Y-Alex Yankowski[5]; 4. 9S-Matt Sheppard[1]; 5. 83X-Tim Sears Jr[10]; 6. 2RJ-Ronnie Johnson[3]; 7. 98H-Jimmy Phelps[11]; 8. 4*-Anthony Perrego[16]; 9. 3G-Matt Delorenzo[15]; 10. 70A-Alex Payne[13]; 11. 2-Jack Lehner[20]; 12. 111-Demetrios Drellos[4]; 13. 3J-Marc Johnson[19]; 14. 8-Rich Scagliotta[18]; 15. 35-Mike Mahaney[26]; 16. 21A-Peter Britten[23]; 17. 99-Kolby Schroder[21]; 18. 99L-Larry Wight[25]; 19. 28-Michael Trautschold[28]; 20. 12-Darren Smith[7]; 21. 91-Felix Roy[27]; 22. 15X-Justin Stone[9]; 23. 20-David Schilling[22]; 24. 32C-James Meehan[12]; 25. 27J-Danny Johnson[17]; 26. (DNF) 19F-Tim Fuller[6]; 27. (DNF) 18-Ryan Macartney[14]; 28. (DNF) 215-Adam Pierson[24]