BARRE, Vt. — Vermont Milk Bowl qualifying cay on Saturday at Thunder Road was a spectacular display of short-track racing in preparation for Sunday’s Vermont Milk Bowl.
Derek Gluchacki took the Booth Bros./Hood Fast Time Pole Award and the Vermont Milk Bowl pole position on Sunday with a blistering 12.152-second lap over Stephen Donahue’s 12.186-second lap in time trial qualifying. T
he triple-50 heat races followed with Cody Blake, Gabe Brown and Nick Sweet earning the $1,000 heat race wins and setting the top-17 with seven more added from their fast-time in qualifying.
Twenty-four cars are locked in for the Vermont Milk Bowl with the top two finishers in tomorrow’s B-Feature with a provisional on the line for one Thunder Road driver and one American-Canadian Tour driver also on the line.
Fast cars Rich Lowrey and 2023 track champion Kyle Streeter set the pace in segment one of the Mini Milk Bowl for the Lenny’s Shoe & Apparel Flying Tigers. While the battle was hot and heavy early, Streeter marched to the lead on the outside lane. As the green flag laps continued, Jason Woodard and Cam Powers driving the Beaver Dragon throwback got physical for third. With ten laps remaining, Jason Pelkey piled in with second through fifth running under a blanket just on the rear-bumper of Streeter before disaster struck. The Streeter machine lost the right front wheel bearing just Woodard dove under the defending champion in turn three.
Lowrey and Woodard went to war under the restart green flag, leaving a show for Powers and Pelkey in third and fourth. Jason Woodard kept his speed up to take the segment win with Jason Pelkey and Rich Lowery rounding out the top three.
Former track champions Dean Switser and Jamie Davis led the rk Miles Street Stock field to green for the first of two segments in their Mini Milk Bowl. While Switser got the jump and the lead in the early stages of their lightning-fast 25-lap segment one, Josh Lovely powered up from his sixth-place starting spot to stalk the leader.
The caution-free showdown saw Dean Switser Jr. take the segment win over Josh Lovely and Trevor Jaques at the line, leading into a super competitive segment two during tomorrow’s program.
Speaking of lightning fast, the New England Supermodifed Series stole the stage for their 75-lap Milk Bowl weekend spectacular. Ryan Battle back behind the wheel of the No. 9 machine led from the drop of the green flag, careening around lap traffic within the first fifteen circuits around the quarter-mile Thunder Road bullring.
Vern Romanowski and Dan Bowles kept up the pace as best they could, but quickly found themselves half-a-track back in second and third. Matt Swanson powered up through just after the halfway point to take the lead before Duggan’s powerplant let loose coming out of turn four.
Battle and Swanson restarted the field with 35 laps remaining as Swanson got shot out of a cannon on on the restart to take the lead from the outside lane before Dave Duggan’s spin in turn two called the caution once more. Swanson powered back up under green to take the Thunder Road win over a hard-charging Ryan Battle in just his second Supermodified start with Dan Bowles rounding out the podium.
Brian Whalley earned the lucky dog spot as Doiron, Jeremy Davis, Hallstrom and Bobby Therrien went pit-side for adjustments. Brown and Hebert faced off on the return to green with Brown gaining the upper hand on the low groove. D.J. Shaw creeped up on Hebert to take second away on lap 67 and set his sights on Brown just a split second ahead of him. The final caution flag flew for Trevor Sanborn slowed in turn three on lap 108 just as Shaw began to work over Brown for the lead. The two restarted dead-even but it was Shaw putting the pedal to the metal on the outside groove to lead lap 109. D.J. Shaw kept pace on the field and took his second consecutive PASS win in 2023 over Gabe Brown and Johnny Clark.