NICHOLS, S.C. — Ross Bailes nursed his damaged late model to victory in Saturday evening’s Drydene Xtreme DIRTcar Series late model feature at Lake View Motor Speedway.
Bailes was chasing leader Matthew Nance when Nance tangled with a lapped car with 15 laps remaining. Bailes piled into the wreck and both his car and Nance’s received significant damage.
However, the retained their spots for the restart. But Nance’s car was hurt worse in the melee.
“We held on as long as we could there until about five-to-go,” Nance said. “I knew if just stayed on the bottom and kept trying to get the car to turn, don’t get the tires hot and let Ross get under us, we’d make him work for it on the top.
“But I [kept having to] slide the right-rear to steer, and when you start doing that, your tire starts wearing out in a hurry. It gets hot and you start having to slow down getting in on corner entry.”
Bailes made his decision quickly, but Nance found some strong reliance, holding the lead until lap 34 when Bailes pulled the trigger and drove off to the $7,000 victory.
“I got up high in [turns] three and four one time and it felt pretty good, so I thought, ‘well I’m going to charge in there even harder next time.’ And sure enough, it stuck, and it was the move that won the race,” Bailes said.
Nance held on to second, marking his first career Xtreme podium. While he did score a career best finish, he was disappointed with the outcome of his incident while leading.
“It pretty much cost us the race tonight; we had a pretty good car until that. We knocked the nose up in the air and it just messed aero up on the car pretty bad,” he said.
Cla Knight, Dustin Mitchell and Stewart Friesen rounded out the top five.
The finish:
Feature (40 Laps) 1. 79-Ross Bailes [1][$7,000]; 2. 2-Matthew Nance [2][$2,500]; 3. 42K-Cla Knight [4][$1,700]; 4. 32-Dustin Mitchell [3][$1,400]; 5. 44F-Stewart Friesen [8][$1,200]; 6. 18D-Daulton Wilson [5][$1,000]; 7. 8-Kyle Strickler [6][$800]; 8. 44-Chris Madden [10][$700]; 9. 88-Trent Ivey [7][$600]; 10. 19-Pearson Lee Williams [9][$550]; 11. 421-Anthony Sanders [14][$500]; 12. 24D-Michael Brown [13][$500]; 13. 15-Michael Marlowe [17][$500]; 14. 6-Chris Blackwell [15][$500]; 15. 16-Brian Nuttall [16][$500]; 16. O6-Christian Thomas [19][$500]; 17. 26JR-Jimmy Sharpe [18][$500]; 18. 20H-Bryson Harper [21][$500]; 19. 17V-Tim Vance [20][$500]; 20. 23-Michael Rouse [11][$500]; 21. 1-Willie Milliken [12][$500]; 22. 4-Kale Green [22][$500]; 23. 57-Adam Yarbrough [23][$500] Hard Charger: 15-Michael Marlowe[+4]