WHEATLAND, Mo. — Kory Schudy took the lead with three laps remaining after race-long leader Xavier Doney had misfortune and Schudy held on from there for the POWRi WAR victory Friday night at Lucas Oil Speedway.
Doney set the early pace from his starting position on the pole. Action ground to a half when Riley Kreisel flipped his car down the front stretch after tangling with Landon Simon to bring out the red flag. Kreisel climbed out of the wrecked machine under his own power.
As action resumed, Wesley Smith moved into second on lap six with Doney leading him by just over a second with Blake Vermillion falling two seconds back of Smith. As the extended green-flag run continued, Doney stretched his margin to 2.5 seconds over Smith by lap 13.
As the leaders caught lapped traffic, Smith’s chances went up in smoke as his car rolled to a stop going down the backstretch on lap 14 with an expired motor.
That elevated Samuel Wagner to second with Schudy third and Vermillion fourth with 11 to go. But before the race could go back to green, Wagner needed to pull into the pits to replace a flat tire.
Schudy took advantage of the restart to go around Doney on the inside for the lead on lap 15, but Doney quickly regained the top spot the next time around. Those two broke away from the field by seven seconds and appeared ready to battle it out for the win.
But with three to go, Doney suddenly slowed coming off turn two with Schudy, who was applying pressure, inheriting the lead. The resulting caution led to a three-lap shootout following the restart, with Doney and ninth-place Paul White part of a multi-car melee in turn one, rolling their cars, to bring out another red flag.
“It’s been run racing with him, it seems like the last month we’ve been going back and forth,” Schudy said. “He was way better than us at the start and I was kind of hung up in the slime. After one of those reds, we kind of got going. Once we got up on the top, that thing was lights out.”
Schudy had a flawless final restart and drove away to finish 1.6 seconds in front of Matt Sherrell for the win.
“We’ve won a prelim night before and kind of choked on Saturday, so we’re not gonna celebrate too much tonight,” Schudy said.
Sherrell had an impressive run, going from 19th to second to become the clear hard-charger of the race.
“This feels good,” Sherrell said. “The start of the night, it wasn’t going our way, but we rallied and came back. We fought a little bit in the B and just kept tuning on it the whole night. That was a lot of fun.”
Vermillion finished third with Caleb Stelzig fourth and Rob Caho Jr. fifth.
The finish:
Feature (25 Laps): 1. 28-Kory Schudy[2]; 2. 15-Matt Sherrell[19]; 3. 73V-Blake Vermillion[3]; 4. 21-Caleb Stelzig[5]; 5. 78-Rob Caho Jr[9]; 6. 41-Brad Wyatt[13]; 7. 8D-Colten Cottle[7]; 8. 71W-Weston Gorham[15]; 9. 34-RJ Miller[21]; 10. 75-Tyler Blank[16]; 11. 73-Samuel Wagner[6]; 12. 26-Zachary Clark[20]; 13. 38-Travis Oldfield[18]; 14. 87-Jason Billups[22]; 15. 74-Xavier Doney[1]; 16. 1P-Paul White[8]; 17. 00-Broc Elliott[12]; 18. 44-Wesley Smith[4]; 19. 24-Landon Simon[10]; 20. 91-Riley Kreisel[11]; 21. 33W-Rece Wommack[17]; 22. 24LCR-Chris Morgan[14].