ABBOTTSTOWN, Pa. — For the second week in a row Lincoln Speedway officials made the decision to push the start time up two hours to try and beat Mother Nature.
Luckily with four features to run, the move worked this Saturday with the rain beginning to fall as Robbie Kendall pulled his car into victory lane after the fourth feature.
Going through the Lincoln Record Books, one would need to go back to 2014 to find a year it took Brian Montieth longer to find victory lane. In 2014 Montieth waited until May 31st to earn his first win of the season. Montieth earned his first victory of 2019 on Saturday night during the $4,000 to win World of Outlaws tune-up.
Montieth started on the pole of the 25-lap feature, with Alan Krimes to his outside. Krimes used the top of the track to take the lead as the green flag dropped. Third starting Danny Dietrich started to go to work on Montieth for second. The leaders hit lapped traffic on lap 4.
Typically, more comfortable running the top of the track, Montieth tried the bottom to get by Krimes on lap five. It looked like it worked until Montieth got held up by a slowing car allowing Krimes to keep the lead.
Montieth dove to the bottom of turn four on lap seven to try and get the lead and it was a drag race to the flag stand, but Krimes held him off again. Any momentum Montieth could carry from the frontstretch going into turn one went away coming out of turn two until lap 10. Montieth got under Krimes in one and two on lap 10 and made it stick. Dietrich followed to take second.
Dietrich was getting a great run off of turn two to keep pace with Montieth. Montieth narrowly split two lapped cars battling for position on lap 13 to put them between him and Dietrich. As Dietrich worked on the lapped cars Montieth was able to pull away.
Once Dietrich made his way past the lapped cars, he had Montieth’s lead down to under a second by lap 18. Two laps later Montieth’s lead was back up over a second as Dietrich got tied up in lapped traffic again.
Freddie Rahmer had gotten by Krimes for third on lap 14 but Krimes didn’t let him out of his sight. Krimes got Rahmer back on lap 23 as Rahmer got caught behind a lapped car.
Montieth beat Dietrich to the checkered flag by .635 seconds to win the non-stop feature. Not only was the feature non-stop, it was record setting. Total running time was 6:19.113, the fastest 25 laps on record at Lincoln Speedway. Krimes held onto third. Rahmer crossed the line fourth and Anthony Macri completed the top five.
Kendall started on the pole of Saturday night’s make-up feature from last week’s rain-shortened event. Bradley Howard started on the outside of row one.