PORT ROYAL, Pa. — A typical weekly show for Weikert’s Livestock 410 sprint cars pays $5,000 to the winner, but on Saturday night,
Anthony Macri walked away with $6,300 thanks to an incredible performance driving from 10th to the win on the last lap during the 25-lap A-main event.
Garrett Bard and Mike Thompson would start on the front row of the feature event with Bard taking the early lead after three attempts at the initial start.
A false start and a lap one flip led to the first two attempts to start the race being null and void, but on the third attempt, Bard would hop out to the early lead and would be in front by as many as 3 seconds.
Ryan Smith and Danny Dietrich would work their way into the second and third, respectively, two laps into the A-main event while Macri, who had started in 10th, was up to eighth.
Dietrich would find himself in the runner up spot with 20 laps remaining but would need to close in three-second lead that Bard had built up to that point.
Bard would navigate lapped traffic with 15 laps remaining allowing Dietrich to eat into his lead and make an attempted pass for the top spot with 10 laps remaining.
Dietrich would slide in front of Bard in turns 3 and 4, but Bard, who is searching for his first 410 sprint car win at Port Royal Speedway, would drive back around Dietrich coming off of turn four to maintain the lead.
While the top 2 cars battled for the lead over the next 6 laps, Anthony Macri raced his way into the top 3 with 4 laps remaining.
While battling for the lead, Bard was able to slide around a lapped car to put between himself and Dietrich who would then get into the rear end of the lapper on the back straightaway, allowing Macri to pass for second as they would come to the 2-lap-to-go signal.
Bard opened his lead back up to a full second following these events, but clean air for the top two cars allowed Macri to reel Bard in over the final laps.
Bard would choose to go to the bottom side of turns 3 and 4 allowing Macri to choose his favored top lane in the final set of corners and build momentum coming to the checkered flag.
Macri would pull alongside Bard on the front stretch coming to the checkered flag with both cars passing the flag stand practically dead even. It would take a look at the official scoring to see that Macri had claimed the win on the final lap by a boggling seven one thousandths of a second.
“It was just kind of a last-ditch effort there,” said Macri, “in turns 3 and 4 in the final lap. I just drove it very hard.”
Bard, who led 24 of the 25 laps, said during his post-race interview, “I should be happy to run second but this is probably the most disheartening seconds you’ll ever run when 50 feet or so and you give it up.”
Dietrich finished third
In Penske Racing Shocks super late model competition, Andrew Yoder would start on the pole and lead all 25 laps to claim his first career super late model win at Port Royal Speedway.
The winged super sportsman portion of the show was cancelled due to a rain shower that opened up over the track.
The finish:
Feature: 1. 39M-Anthony Macri[10]; 2. 95-Garrett Bard[2]; 3. 48-Danny Dietrich[6]; 4. 67-Justin Whittall[7]; 5. 7BC-Tyler Courtney[12]; 6. 8E-Brock Zearfoss[9]; 7. 12D-Lance Dewease[5]; 8. 19-Brent Marks[16]; 9. 87-Aaron Reutzel[11]; 10. 6-Ryan Smith[4]; 11. 5W-Lucas Wolfe[8]; 12. 47K-Kody Lehman[3]; 13. 55W-Mike Wagner[13]; 14. 55-Logan Wagner[20]; 15. 27S-Robbie Kendall[14]; 16. 2-Gerard McIntyre Jr[15]; 17. 11-TJ Stutts[17]; 18. 11T-Mike Thompson[1]; 19. 45-Jeff Halligan[18]; 20. 35-Austin Bishop[22]; 21. 18J-JT Ferry[24]; 22. 17K-Kyle Keen[19]; 23. 69X-Kassidy Kreitz[23]; 24. 39-Derek Hauck[21]
