MEEKER, Okla. — Kyle Clark stood tall in Saturday night’s Seventh Annual Pat Suchy Classic and Salute to Fairgrounds Speedway by topping the season-ending Oil Capital Racing Series feature event at Red Dirt Raceway.
Clark used lapped traffic to his advantage to take command at the midway point of the 33-lapper and kept Fred Mattox and early pacesetter Grady Mercer at bay in the closing rounds to score his first series win of the season aboard the Same Day Auto Repair/Tire Pros No. 9$ sprint car.
While Clark topped the season-ender, Blake Edwards came away with the series championship with an eighth-place finish.
Clark led the way to the green flag, but it was fellow front-row starter Mercer gunning into the early lead and pacing the initial half of the feature event before Clark raced by in traffic.
“I felt like we were a little better,” Clark explained afterward. “I was just waiting for traffic to come into play, I thought we could get the lead back then.”
Slicing through traffic, Clark still had his hands full over the closing rounds as fifth-starter Mattox and Mercer kept the pressure on. But a miscue by Mattox when he scraped the wall exiting turn four in the late stages and then an encounter with traffic with just three laps to go allowed Clark to race to the stripe.
“The lapped cars were racing us really hard,” Clark said. “But I think it worked out to our advantage.”
After slipping past Mercer for second three laps after Clark took command, Mattox held the runner-up slot to the line with Mercer filling out the podium in third. Johnny Kent advanced a handful of positions to fourth with Whit Gastineau rounding out the top five.
The feature was interrupted by just one caution when Joe Wood, Jr., spun to a stop in turn four after three laps with the final 30 rounds run off in non-stop fashion.
The drama of the series championship battle went up in smoke early when Rees Moran, who entered the night with a 12-point advantage over Edwards, grenade an engine in hot laps and was done for the night. Moran and crew assisted Edwards through the rest of the evening as he capitalized to the earn the title.
The Finish:
Feature (33 Laps): (33 Laps): 1. 9$-Kyle Clark[1]; 2. 26M-Fred Mattox[5]; 3. 42-Grady Mercer[2]; 4. 55-Johnny Kent[9]; 5. 2-Whit Gastineau[8]; 6. 83-Jett Hays[3]; 7. 88-Terry Easum[12]; 8. 17E-Blake Edwards[10]; 9. 18-Dillon Laden[15]; 10. 5$-Danny Smith[17]; 11. 21-Brandon Jennings[16]; 12. 08E-Elizabeth Phillips[7]; 13. 88R-Ryder Laplante[19]; 14. 31-Casey Wills[18]; 15. 03-Joe Wood Jr[14]; 16. 20S-Sheldon Barksdale[20]; 17. 6-Cameron Hagin[13]; 18. 17A-Jeremy Allen[11]; 19. 78-Tanner Conn[4]; 20. 51-Ryan Dean[6]