PORT ROYAL, Pa. — To open the racing season, Danny Dietrich parked in Kish Bank victory lane at Port Royal Speedway. 5 months later, he returned there to the tune of $20,000 after an intense battle with Chase Dietz over the course of a 30-lap feature event on Saturday evening.
Lucas Wolfe and Cameron Smith would lead the field to green in the 20th running of the Living Legends Dream Race presented by J&S Classics. Wolfe would lead the opening circuit with Danny Dietrich, who started outside the second row, would briefly challenge Wolfe before settling into second.
Chase Dietz, who started the race in third, would get back up to that position after briefly falling to fifth by passing by Cameron Smith with just three laps completed.
The caution flag would wave shortly there after for a broken 33W of Michael Walter Jr. resetting the field to nose-to-tail formation.
On the restart, Dietrich would try to utilize a good start to make a pass of Wolfe for the lead, but wouldn’t build up enough momentum to complete the move.
The attempted pass would cut Dietrich’s momentum enough to allow Dietz to mount a charge for the 2nd spot. Dietz would make a sliding pass around Dietrich for the runner up spot and with 22 laps remaining would pass by Lucas Wolfe for the lead.
The winningest driver in 410 sprint car racing now in Dietz would lead the field, but Dietrich would never let him out of his sights with plenty of race remaining.
As the leaders entered into lapped traffic, Dietrich had found a lot of speed ripping around the top side of the race track.
With 17 laps remaining, Dietrich would try to recreate the pass Dietz put on him earlier in the race in turns 3 and 4. He wouldn’t have enough speed to fully take over the lead, but that’s when the two drivers would really go to battle.
Dietrich would lead his first official lap with just 13 laps remaining as Chase Dietz and Dietrich were slicing their way through lapped traffic, and 2025 track champion Justin Whittall gunning them down as well.
With the top 3 cars separated from the field and all battling for the win, Dietz would get his car sucked in to the top of the turn 4 wall with 5 laps remaining. He would turn the car as hard as he could to peel his machine off ultimately putting himself sideways in front of Justin Whittall who made slight contact with Dietz. Dietz, in an impressive effort, would not spin out, straighten his car back out and keep going staying inside the top 3.
Dietrich now would open his lead to out over 2 seconds, but after just 3 more laps, Justin Whittall would end up doing a 360 spin in turns 3 and 4 drawing the yellow flag.
A restart with 2 laps remaining would close the gap once again between Dietrich and Dietz, but now the 69K of Ryan Smith would enter into the mix.
Once the green flag came back out, Dietz would hang right with Dietrich right up to the white flag as they entered the first and second corner.
Both cars would go to the top side of the race track, allowing Dietrich to put some dirty air across the nose wing of the Stehman-owned 23, cutting his momentum and allowing Ryan Smith to pull alongside Dietz for the runner-up spot.
Those two would battle down to the checkered flag but it would be Dietrich who would cross the line in first claiming the $20,000 payday.
Ryan Smith would steal second and Dietz finished third.
In Penske Racing Shocks super late model competition, Drake Troutman led from wire to wire in a race that got exciting right down in the last few laps.
The finish:
Feature (30 laps): 1. 48-Danny Dietrich[4]; 2. 69K-Ryan Smith[8]; 3. 23-Chase Dietz[3]; 4. 1A-Cameron Smith[2]; 5. 66-Ryan Newton[9]; 6. 12-Brent Shearer[6]; 7. 17-Mark Smith[5]; 8. 8-Lance Dewease[14]; 9. 39-Lucas Wolfe[1]; 10. 27-Troy Wagaman Jr[22]; 11. 27S-Dylan Cisney[10]; 12. 55-Logan Wagner[18]; 13. 10C-Matt Campbell[13]; 14. 67-Justin Whittall[7]; 15. 11-TJ Stutts[12]; 16. 35-Buddy Schweibinz[19]; 17. 17B-Steve Buckwalter[20]; 18. 22-Doug Hammaker[24]; 19. 77-Kody Hartlaub[11]; 20. 99-Devin Adams[16]; 21. 51-Freddie Rahmer[21]; 22. 11A-Austin Bishop[15]; 23. 71-Logan Rumsey[17]; 24. 33W-Michael Walter[23]
