WEEDSPORT, N.Y. — David Gravel and Big Game Motorsports continued their domination of Weedsport Speedway on Sunday night.
Gravel won the annual World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series Empire Challenge for the fourth time in five years.
Gravel began the night by setting the fastest time in his qualifying flight and parlayed that into a heat race win. Gravel drew the pole for the dash, which he also won.
The green flag waved on the feature and Gravel got the early jump, but Cole Macedo didn’t make it easy through the early circuits. He stayed within striking distance, but as the laps clicked away Gravel got stronger and stronger through traffic.
The defending series champion led from flag to flag, and the margin of victory was north of six seconds.
“You just never know,” Gravel said. “The pace gets so slow. They did track work, had the tiller out, and they haven’t done that all night. So, I just didn’t know if the top was going to be the place to be or not. We had a lot of aggressive guys behind us, so you know they were going to try it. I saw Cole (Macedo) in (Turns) 1 and 2 those first couple laps, but other than that I didn’t really see him.”
Gravel already owned the most World of Outlaws triumphs at Weedsport entering the night, and he extended that record with his fifth score. He’s won 33-percent of the series’ visits to the D-shaped track. His 11th checkered flag of 2025 is the 114th of his career with The Greatest Show on Dirt as he continues to close in on Danny Lasoski’s total of 122 for sixth all-time.
Michael “Buddy” Kofoid took the second spot on Lap 22 and held on to finish runner-up.
“Just hit the fence basically,” Kofoid said with a laugh of his line in Turns 1 and 2. “The cushion seems to always kind of build here center off (Turn) 2. The entry to (Turn) 1 is just hard to wrap your head around just because the wall is almost like a square. You have to cut across (Turn) 1 otherwise you kind of get hung out in no man’s land and the wall comes at you. It seems better to just slide across. At least for me and our car it was better to be leaning against something.”
Sheldon Haudenschild took the Stenhouse Jr.-Marshall Racing/NOS Energy Drink No. 17 from eighth to third.
“It was just tough starting eighth,” Haudenschild explained. “The 1A (Ashton Torgerson) ran her down in there and parked it, and I was running about 10th there, so I was happy for that early caution. I just found the top and was able to get a few guys and just get my tires under me and get a little bit of heat in them and be able to move around.”
Brothers Carson Macedo and Cole Macedo completed the top five.
The finish:
Feature (30 Laps): 1. 2-David Gravel[1]; 2. 83-Michael Kofoid[3]; 3. 17-Sheldon Haudenschild[8]; 4. 41-Carson Macedo[7]; 5. 2C-Cole Macedo[2]; 6. 1S-Logan Schuchart[6]; 7. 15T-Ryan Turner[4]; 8. 18-Emerson Axsom[10]; 9. 38-Zach Sobotka[9]; 10. O1-Danny Varin[19]; 11. 23-Garet Williamson[11]; 12. 17B-Bill Balog[18]; 13. 28-Jordan Poirier[20]; 14. 15-Donny Schatz[14]; 15. 99L-Larry Wight[16]; 16. 79-Jordan Thomas[24]; 17. 99-Skylar Gee[15]; 18. 6-Zach Hampton[25]; 19. 45-Cory Eliason[13]; 20. 1A-Ashton Torgerson[5]; 21. 41R-Dalton Rombough[23]; 22. 55-Hunter Schuerenberg[22]; 23. 21-Alex Therrien[21]; 24. 7S-Chris Windom[12]; 25. 2X-Dave Axton[17]
