WHEATLAND, Mo. — Henry Chambers held off Trevor Hughes in a frantic final few laps to earn the Arctic Food Equipment USRA Modified main event on Saturday night as the Pitts Homes and Realty Challenge Cup debuted at Lucas Oil Speedway.
Chambers, of Baldwin City, Kansas, earned a $1,000 prize by beating Hughes by a car length. A total of 122 cars checked into the pits in the five divisions on Ozarks Coca-Cola/Dr Pepper Night at the races, with JC Morton also picking up a $1,000 feature win, in the Hermitage Lumber Late Models.
Feature winners taking home $750 were William Garner (O’Reilly Auto Parts USRA Stock Cars), Jon Sheets (Clear Creek Golf Cars USRA B-Mods) and Derek Brown (Hickamo Super Stocks).
Chambers, 18, took the lead from Hughes on lap 14 just three laps after a caution wiped out Hughes’ sizeable lead of nearly three seconds.
“The car was working good. I don’t know if we would have been able to get by Trevor if we didn’t have that caution,” Chambers said in victory lane. “Obviously that opened up an opportunity and I didn’t let that one go. The race car was really good tonight.”
Hughes, of Westville, Okla., was the man to beat from the start. He went from third to first on the opening lap and set the pace over Devin Barker as the sixth-starting Chambers moved into third. Chambers and Barker flip-flopped positions on lap four as Hughes opened a 1.5-second lead.
Hughes threatened to make it a runaway by lap eight, leading by 2.6 seconds over Chambers as Nic Bidinger took the third spot. Caution on lap 11 wiped out Hughes’ 2.4-second lead over Chambers.
Chambers jumped to the high side after the restart and it worked, as Chambers took the lead with a first-turn pass on lap 14. One lap later, ninth-starting Wolff sailed around Hughes for second but he jumped the cushion in turn two a lap later to fall back into third.
Chambers took advantage of the shuffling behind him and held off Hughes’ last-ditch effort to win by a half-second. It was his second USRA Modified win at Lucas Oil Speedway, the other coming in 2024.
Bidinger wound up third with Wolff fourth and Cole Campbell fifth.
JC Morton of Springfield held off the defending Hermitage Lumber Late Models track champ Robbe Ewing for his first Challenge Cup feature victory.
Tyler Wolff was scheduled to start on the pole but elected to drop to the back for a chance to collect a $500 bonus if he was able to pull off the win.
Wolff already had picked up nine positions, moving into fifth by lap four and to fourth by lap six. Morton continued to set a hot pace up front with Ewing second and Tucker Cox third. That’s where Wolff’s advancement hit a snag with the race remaining under extended green-flag conditions.
Morton led Ewing by 1.4 seconds by lap 15 as the top two finishers in the division a year ago picked up where they left off. Two laps later, the race took a turn as the third-running Cox slowed to a stop in turn two, bringing out the caution.
That erased Morton’s one-second lead over Ewing and put Wolff back into the mix with three laps remaining. But Morton, riding the high groove, held off Ewing by .722 seconds at the checkers with Wolff winding up in third.
Alan Westling finished fourth with Joe Walkenhorst fifth.
