MONROE, Wash. — Washington State’s own Owen Riddle scored what was the biggest pot of his career late Saturday night after a magnificent drive saw him collect the $25,000 top prize in the Summer Showdown super late model event at Evergreen Speedway.
It was by no means plain sailing for Riddle, who had to fight his way through a typically crowded field of West Coast all-stars to claim his win.
Derek Thorn appeared again to be the dominant fast car and led the most laps.
With 53 laps to go, Thorn was finally able to open up over a second advantage on his nearest pursuer and the race went yellow again. When the race went back to green, it was Thorn keeping Riddle at bay, though, what turned out to be just the penultimate yellow had allowed the chasing pack to close on the head of the race.
Finally, on lap 156 Riddle was able to get past Thorn and open up a half-second advantage, which grew to a couple of seconds.
With 22 laps to go, the 35-year-old Riddle was a comfortable 3.5 seconds ahead of Thorn, who looked like he had settled for a spot on the podium but there was to be another twist as Tyler Tanner in the No. 65 car began to pick his way through the field.
Riddle, Mike Longton and Brandon Farrington were all passed before Tanner claimed Thorn’s No. 2 spot and set off in pursuit of Riddle. Going into the last 10 laps, Tanner had four seconds to make up on Riddle while Thorn was battling to hang on to the final podium spot ahead of No. 25f Farrington.
“There were some choice words on the radio back there,” Riddle said. “I didn’t know what those guys had behind me, some of them may have been saving it – but we got a good restart and did what we had to do.”
Farrington pronounced himself pleased with his weekend’s efforts.
“I’ve got nothing bad to say about anything that happened here this weekend. I knew it was going to be a little bit different because we’ve learned so much about the car. The restarts kind of played in my favor tonight. My car really fired up at the restarts. I’ve got to thank everyone who came out this weekend, the fans and my crew. It’s a three-day weekend so it’s a long one and I can’t thank them enough!”
Thorn finished fourth.
“The left front is sitting on the opposite direction on camber,” he explained. “We think we broke a spring or a shock about lap 150. I was just hanging on for dear life the last 50 laps. The car was really good the whole race but with three laps to go and a restart we were just hanging on to a top four. I hate to say it but the top four is good with how bad that thing is.”