On the restart with 13 to go, a new contender emerged in 12th-starting Meseraull, himself a third-place finisher in the 2011 Hut 100 at Tri-State. Meseraull was in position to capitalize when Thomas slid by McDougal in turn two.
McDougal and Thomas made slight bumper to bumper contact, both chocked it up, and Meseraull drove underneath both down the back straightaway and into the lead.
Meseraull withstood McDougal’s relentless pursuit over the next few laps, countering each turn three slider delivered to him on laps 18, 19 and 20 to retain the lead at the stripe.
On the 21st lap, McDougal went into action with a slider under Meseraull in turn one. That time, Meseraull launched off turn two and entered turn three side-by-side under McDougal.
The two aimed to occupy the same piece of ground at the same moment at the top of turn four, with Meseraull’s right front tire and McDougal’s left rear meeting face-to-face, sending Meseraull backwards into the outside wall and ending his bid for victory.
However, Meseraull did return to finish eighth after restarting from the tail.
“T-Mez was a little upset with me for how I drove around him in three and four, but I didn’t see anything wrong with it. He hit my left rear,” McDougal said.
On the lap 21 restart, McDougal was gone, opening up a full-straightaway lead over Thomas and, for all intents and purposes, putting this one on ice as he ran his preferred line in the middle.
With a clear track in his sight, McDougal set the fastest lap of the race on the 24th circuit and all was right in his world.
“Entering one is a little tricky, had a little hole getting into it, but once I got to racing with KTJ, every time he slid me, he pulled away and never got to the cushion,” he noted. “So, I pulled down the last few restarts and was actually better right through the middle.”
A caution on lap 25 involving Karsyn Elledge and Jerry Coons Jr. erased McDougal’s advantage and put him in the position of having to deliver the same restart performance once again and avoid a potential race-changing slider from Thomas.
The next try saw McDougal escape with an eight car length lead on the restart, but only briefly as Elledge spun to a stop on the bottom of turn four on the 26th lap, forcing yet another restart and putting him in a slightly precarious position.
However, McDougal had the utmost confidence to finish the job.
“(Crew chief) Bob (East) always gives me a good car,” McDougal said. “It’s usually a little tight at the beginning, but we’re always pretty hot the last 10-15 laps. I got a little nervous with the yellows we had going there. You always get nervous when you get three yellows like that. You don’t want to restart the same like that, but obviously it was working.
“I switched up the entry on the restart a little bit, but other than that, I felt like I was pretty good.”
The final restart was just as peachy for McDougal as he pulled away once and for all, pulling out to a half-straight advantage on the initial lap after the restart and securing the victory by 2.752 seconds over Thomas, Cummins, Tyler Courtney and Justin Grant.
Of note, Tanner Thorson’s time of 2:59.89, set during the night’s semi-feature, established a new 12-lap NOS Energy Drink USAC National Midget track record at Tri-State. It eclipsed the mark set by Jerry Weeks 40 years earlier, in 1979, by nearly 17 seconds.
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