WHEATLAND, Mo. — Mitch Keeter survived numerous restarts in a dominant performance to win Saturday night’s Pitts Homes USRA Modified feature, the Memorial Day weekend headliner at Lucas Oil Speedway.
Keeter led all 25 laps in earning $1,000 on Week 2 of the Big Adventure RV Weekly Racing Series.
Also earning feature wins in a program presented by Ozarks FOX were Derek Brown (O’Reilly Auto Parts Street Stocks), Johnny Fennewald (Warsaw Auto Marine & RV ULMA Late Models) and Dillon McCowan (Ozark Golf Cars USRA B-Mods).
Caution flags on the first two attempts to start the USRA Modified feature only briefly delayed Keeter’s domination. Once the race went green for a sustained period, Keeter pulled away and was 6.46 seconds in front of Justin Johnson when a lap-11 caution bunched the field.
Keeter had opened a 1.7-second led by lap 16 over Johnson and Joe Duvall when another caution wiped out his cushion with nine laps to go. Again, Keeter opened a comfortable lead before a trio of cautions, with five laps left, forced Keeter to handle restart after restart after restart to protect his advantage.
Once the event stayed green – and remained that way – Keeter once separated himself. He finished 1.6 seconds in front of Johnson with Duvall third, Ryan Middaugh fourth and first-week feature winner Robbie Reed in fifth.
“I had some good luck and a real good heat race,” said Keeter, who earned the pole in the feature with a last-to-first run in his heat. “Things just went my way.”
Brown led every lap in winning last week’s O’Reilly Auto Parts Street Stocks season-opening feature. This time, Brown only led the final circuit while making it 2-for-2 in trips to victory lane in 2020.
Brown started tailback after sustaining a DQ after his heat-race win. He quickly worked has way into the mix after avoiding a first-lap accident that took out a large chunk of the field. Still, it was Cody Frazon who appeared on his way to victory, holding a 3.5-second lead with just five laps remaining.
But Brown kept slicing into the lead and, coming to the white flag, Frazon had trouble avoiding a lapped car. That gave Brown the opening he needed and he made the decisive pass coming off turn two and prevailed by .125 seconds at the finish.
Frazon wound up second with Johnny Coats third and Toby Ott fourth.
After his car went up in flames during the opening-week feature, three-time defending track champion Johnny Fennewald bounced back with a flag-to-flag feature win.
Fennewald finished 5.29 seconds in front of Aaron Marrant with Cole Henson in third. Fennewald was running second when a fire under his hood ended his run a week earlier.
As running his own construction business takes much of his week-day time, Fennewald said he compressed the work in getting the car repaired into two days.
“We had a pretty good car,” Fennewald said. “We were running a little bit late to get here. It’s hard to rebuild a car in two days. About everything underneath it was burned up. It was a pretty bad deal. We had a car to win last week.”
Dillon McCowan was elevated to his first Ozark Golf Cars USRA B-Mod feature win when Ryan Gillmore, who crossed the finish line in first, was disqualified in post-race technical inspection.