MESQUITE, Texas — Capitalizing on lapped traffic in the late stages of the preliminary A-Feature at the Devil’s Bowl Winter Nationals, Sam Hafertepe Jr. won Friday’s American Sprint Car Series feature.
Win No. 8 in National Tour competition for Hafertepe at the famed half-mile, the victory was his 64th with the ASCS National Tour. It also marked 10 consecutive years that the Sunnyvale, Texas, native has won at least one National Tour event.
Chasing Blake Hahn from the drop of the green, traffic began entering the mix on lap 16. Leading by 1.611 seconds as he began working around the back markers, Hahn’s advantage dissipated rapidly.
On the back bumper of the Smiley’s Racing Products No. 52 on lap 18, the pair raced wheel-to-wheel the following lap, with Hahn holding by .015 seconds.
Not able to fend off the Hills Racing No. 15h any longer, Hafertepe took over with six laps to go.
After a caution flag on the white-flag lap, an attempt at a green-white-checkered finish saw Kyler Johnson flip in turns three and four.
The final one-lap shootout saw Hafertepe finish .765 seconds ahead of Hahn.
“When we took the green, I ran the bottom, and obviously he [Blake Hahn] has really good speed around the top, but I knew once we got to traffic, he’d be skittish to go low, so I felt it out at the start of the race to see if the holes would upset my car, and it timed out where he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that’s part of being a veteran in the sport. Sometimes you capitalize on people’s mistakes,” said Hafertepe.
Hahn held on for second with Chase Randall, who slipped to eight on the opening lap from fifth, making the last-lap pass for the final podium step.
Howard Moore and Jason Martin completed the top five.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr[4]; 2. 52-Blake Hahn[1]; 3. 9-Chase Randall[5]; 4. 3-Howard Moore[2]; 5. 36-Jason Martin[6]; 6. 87J-Jace Park[12]; 7. 7M-Chance Morton[14]; 8. 55B-Brandon Anderson[15]; 9. 12H-Harli White[16]; 10. 14-Jordon Mallett[7]; 11. 95-Matt Covington[8]; 12. 91-Michael Day[21]; 13. 2J-Zach Blurton[11]; 14. 6-Christopher Townsend[24]; 15. 4C-Tuesday Calderwood[13]; 16. 2-Brekton Crouch[10]; 17. 45X-Kyler Johnson[18]; 18. 71-Channin Tankersley[20]; 19. 4-Austin Mundie[19]; 20. 1Z-Justin Zimmerman[17]; 21. 2X-Tucker Doughty[22]; 22. 1J-Danny Jennings[9]; 23. 2C-Wayne Johnson[3]; 24. 10-Landon Britt[23]