BARBERVILLE, Fla. — Cole Falloway continued to grow his newfound comfort at Volusia Speedway Park with his second straight Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals win Saturday night.
The Owensboro, Ky., driver made the most out of the 25 laps on Saturday night leading a competitive field of DIRTcar UMP Modifieds from start to finish.
Falloway and Thursday’s Feature winner Curt Spalding opened the night’s racing action with a duel for the lead from the get-go. Falloway claimed the top spot with a high-line move through Turns 1 and 2 that played similarly to how he took the lead for his first-career Gator on Friday.
Spalding struggled to harness the No.5cs modified’s power to contend and fell outside the top five. This widened the door for Trevor Neville, David Stremme and Kyle Strickler to pass and journey toward the high-point driver of Falloway.
Heartbreak struck Neville for the second consecutive night as a spin on Lap 10 ended his chances of winning the night’s feature after running in a podium position.
In a mirror of Friday night’s running order, Falloway led over Stremme, Strickler, and Will Krup to battle for the remaining 15 laps. Strickler took third place from Stremme, with Krup taking second place.
Falloway extended his lead to over three seconds on Krup until a caution in front on Lap 18 gave the hornet’s nest of UMP Modifieds one more chance at fighting for the night’s Feature win.
Strickler took over second from Krup on the restart but had no chance at closing the distance on Falloway’s No.66 as the lead inflated to over five seconds by the time he crossed the finish line for his second DIRTcar Nationals Gator through three career starts at Volusia Speedway Park.
“A lot of it was me getting comfortable,” Falloway said. “Like I said last night, I wasn’t very comfortable, and the more laps I get to make, the more comfortable I continue to get with this place.”
With his second-place finish, Strickler earned his third consecutive podium of the opening week.
“We’re close, but so far away,” Strickler said. “Congrats to old (Cole Falloway) over there. He kicked our asses to the height. I don’t know, we just need something because I felt really loose when it was starting to rubber up, and I was in protect mode. Will chose the top and I think it was starting to rubber then. I was able to get to second, but we got some homework to do to keep up with Cole.”
Krup brought home a second straight podium result with his third-place finish
“I feel like (momentum) is pretty good,” Krup said. “Kind of like Kyle, we need to work on it a little bit. We’re not bad, but we need to find some speed especially to compete with the No.66 over there. Not bad, I definitely chose the wrong lane on that restart, but the car is good and we’ll see what we got next week.”
Spalding recovered to a fourth-place finish, while Stremme was fifth.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 66-Cole Falloway[2]; 2. 8S-Kyle Strickler[9]; 3. K9-Will Krup[5]; 4. 5CS-Curt Spalding[1]; 5. 35-David Stremme[4]; 6. 45H-Kyle Hammer[13]; 7. 21CZ-Cole Czarneski[14]; 8. 05-David Wietholder[12]; 9. 77D-George Dixon[7]; 10. 97-Mitch Thomas[8]; 11. 114-Jordan Koehler[15]; 12. 77-Ray Bollinger[10]; 13. 5-Jonathan Taylor[17]; 14. 36-Kenny Wallace[18]; 15. 10Y-Trent Young[20]; 16. 15X-Justin Stone[19]; 17. 24-Zeke McKenzie[16]; 18. 19-Dustin Sorensen[6]; 19. 1-Randy Giroux[23]; 20. 35A-Michael Altobelli[11]; 21. 57-Charlie Sandercock[22]; 22. 777-Trevor Neville[3]; 23. 13-Charlie Mefford[21]; 24. 7D-Brad Deyoung[24]
